Re: Infererence by scheme (Re: namespace usage as assertions)

> Are there any guides that actively discourage folks from
> supporting GET access on namespace names? I'd surely
> like to change those.

Not discouraging, but making it clear that there is nothing wrong with
having no retreivable entity at the URI if you so wish.

Have a look at the namespace faq or "namespace myths" (both at
xml.org, I think) or any postings about namespaces to xml-dev
by most members of the original WG.

> I wish people would stop issuing namespace names without
> backing them by anthing more than 404 errors,

You mean like this, Tim Bray on this list, earlier today?

  > But it would be perfectly OK to say nothing, never have the intent of
  > putting anything at http://a.b.com, and still use this namespace without
  > violating the letter or spirit of the namespace REC.

You only get a 404 error if you try to retrieve an entity from the
namespace name, and the current namespace spec makes it quite clear
that in general there is no reason for you to expect to do that.
In certain situations you may know that there is something retrievable
and in that case you might try but in general there is nothing there,
or what is there has nothing to do with the namespace.
Even when something is retrievable (eg a java class) you may still get
a 404 error from an http server as a typical way for (say) an xslt
engine to find a class file from the namespace name is to ignore
everything in the namespace uri except the last path component, and
then use any class on the java classpath that matches that name.

David

Received on Wednesday, 21 June 2000 18:14:30 UTC