RE: Choose your namespace (Was : Personal view)

Thank you for your reply. Indeed, the namespaces specification can be read
to support the idea that unambiguous comparison of names is a goal.  But it
is a large jump to read from this that it is "the _essential_" goal, or even
that having this goal necessitates any particular mechanism of performing
the comparison.

What is made clear by the lengthy discussion on namespaces and URIs is that
a certain aspect of the specification, namely context-dependent URIs, is in
conflict with another apparently desirable goal, namely cheap
character-based comparison, and this has raised the issue of whether two
contextually-dependent namespace names from different contexts are
necessarily the same if their characters are the same.  

That is, we are debating whether it is proper that "URI references which
identify namespaces are considered identical when they are exactly the same
character-for-character."  It is invalid for you to have cited this passage
as evidence in support of itself.

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 19:04:22 UTC