Re: Can everyone be happy?

Thank you for the clarification

> Henrick, I suspect you missed the part of the discussion which
>
> a) Agreed that for purposes of interlinking a set of documents which is
> always moved as a set, relative syntax makes perfect sense;

ok

> b) Agreed that for purposes of linking to something which may not be
moved
> as a part of that set, relative syntax is a disaster;

ok

> c) Pointed out that for many -- arguably most -- uses of namespaces, one
or
> more instances of the namespace identity are hardcoded into an
application
> (the XSLT namespace is typical), and effectively is NOT moved as part of
> the selfcontained set of documents.

This is really just taking the other path of the question I posed in [1]
on where the namespaces will come from. So it seems to me that we have
total understanding of each other's points and simply have different
expectations to what way the world will go. I don't have my crystal-ball
with me today so I can't see it from here.

> The fact that relative references are a good thing for some purposes
does
> not make them a good thing for all purposes. Namespaces are a purpose
where
> they are in most cases going to be a Very Bad Thing indeed. One can make
> them meaningful... but the meaning you're forced to assign them flies in
> the face of the original intent of namespaces to define a reliably
> recognizable mechanism for grouping names.
>
>
> A namespace is _NOT_ primarily a link. It's an identity. Unstable
identity
> is generally a bad thing, on the Web or anywhere else.

I would argue that the namespace doesn't care - it is how it is being used
which is not a property of the namespace but of the application using it
and so we are again back to the question in [1].

Thanks,

Henrik

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-uri/2000Jun/0823.html

Received on Thursday, 22 June 2000 22:33:18 UTC