Re: Language = Namespace. was: How namespace names might be used

At 12:52 20/06/00 +0100, Graham Klyne wrote:
>><a:a xmlns:a="http://a.com">
>><b:b xmlns:b="http://b.com">
>></b:b>
>></a:a>
>>
>>Do we have:
>>
>>(a) A document written in one language using the set of names 
>>{http://a.com}a, {http://b.com}b.  This seems to be the natural 
>>interpretation of Tim B-Ls first paragraph.
>>
>>(b) A macaronic document written in two languages.  This is how I 
>>interpret the second paragraph.

>I, for one, have been thinking in terms of (b), except that the 
>description 'macaronic' (as defined in my dictionary) seems to imply a 
>degree of chaos that is not necessarily present.  'Multilingual' would be 
>a more apt description.

<aside>
My dictionary doesn't imply that, and it wasn't the impression I intended 
to give.  Apologies if I accidentally made a more loaded statement than I 
intended.
</aside>

OK.  Does the following then represent your views accurately?

There are documents which are written in several 
(language=namespace)s.  There is no concept of the language of the document 
as a whole (except perhaps in the weak sense of the namespace of the 
document element), and there is certainly no concept of several distinct 
languages drawn from elements from a single namespace.

You are content to be able to make metadata statements only separately 
about the individual (namespace=language)s from which the document is 
composed; and never about a particular combination of those languages.

Specifically, the concept of a DOCTYPE should be allowed to wither (because 
there is nothing interesting to be said about a document which isn't 
already said in the union of the metadata associated with the various 
namespaces from which it is composed).

As a consequence, it doesn't matter that there's nothing at the DOCTYPE 
level which has a URI, and that therefore there's no way of making metadata 
statements about a DOCTYPE.

[[Or do you believe that the DTD URI should retain a role of naming the 
resource which is the DOCTYPE even once DTD based validation has become 
obsolete?  If so, we should probably be having the forbid/absolute/literal 
debate about DTD URIs too.]]

You believe either (a) that the several HTML dialects are one language, and 
that there is no need to be able to make different metadata statements 
about them, or (b) that the single namespace decision was wrong.
--
Cheers,
John

Received on Wednesday, 21 June 2000 06:22:57 UTC