Re: Can everyone be happy?

<flame condescension="on" spellchecker="0" frustration="98%"  >
David said,

> there seems to be fairly clear consensus that nothing in
>particular need be identified by the namespace name if used as a URI.

This is a typical misuse of terminology by the few left on this list
who do not understand the model in the URI specification.
If a "namespace name" does not "identify" a namespace then
how are these words being used?  Is a namespace nothing,
because it is abstract?  Is there a complete inability here to comprehend
something whcih is not a string of characaters?

>The only two people I've seen speak against this with any real
>conviction are Dan Connolly and Tim Berners-Lee.

I think you will find that Jon Cowan and Michael Mealing have been
doing a good job explaining the URI architecture.  Many others have
contributed and or learned a lot. Larry Masinter has
dropped in from time to time,  but the URI working group is done and
disbanded and you can't expect them to turn up in force to patiently
re-explain the same thing over 1500 messages.  I am getting tired.

>However they have
>rather central roles at W3C and that basically is the cause of the
>current difficulty, that W3C HQ don't like their own recommendations
>and don't agree with the current notions of best practices for XML and
>namespace use.


When a subcommunity within the web denegrates, misuses and
generally abuses though lack of understanding another part of the
web architecture it unfortunately falls on staff at W3C to try to hold
the web together.   This is no fun.

There have been a lot of quite nonsensical things on this list
said in quite justified lack of understanding of an abstract
model.  We have all spent a lot of time working though them

If indeed it is true that Dan and I are the only ones who think
that a namespace should be identified by a URI, then we would
of course bow out. The implication I fear would be that we roll all
spaces which define XML namespaces
back to Candidate Rec until a
new model can be proposed for saying what language a document
is written in.

Current notions of "best practice" for thinking up globally unique names
such as "foo" may be felt to be best practice by a set of people
who use and see a very small set of names: but a decade of experience with
scalable identifier systems suggests that using arbitrary strings sucks
dead puppy dogs tails.

If, as Eve suggests, the xml subcommunity (maybe out of pure "not invented
here" syndrome)
would like to break free of nasty URIs and reinvent an entire new system
under their own control, and re-attack the problems of establishment and
delegation
of authority, and distributed name services, then that is of course the
choice
which  anyone can make, and people do indeed try this every few years.

The advisory comittee would have to think very hard about pledging resources
to such a fragmentary effort and I would have to think very hard as to
whether
I would see XML as a useful markup language for the web.

</flame>
>David


Tim

Received on Thursday, 22 June 2000 08:24:48 UTC