Re: status quo

Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> The current situtation seems to be:
> 
> 1) "An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI
> reference [RFC2396], which are used in XML documents as element types and
> attribute names. XML namespaces differ from the "namespaces" conventionally
> used in computing disciplines in that the XML version has internal
> structure and is not, mathematically speaking, a set."
> 
> 2) "URI References which identify namespaces are considered identical when
> they are exactly the same character for character.  Note that URI
> references which are not identical in this sense may in fact be
> functionally equivalent.  Examples include URI references which differ only
> in case, or which are external entities which have different base URIs."
> 
> By my reading, relative URIs are permitted in XML namespaces, but
> namespaces will be compared as strings - character for character - not as
> converted to absolutes.

Meanwhile, the status quo also includes:

	"The namespace URI specified in the XML document can be a URI
	reference as defined in [RFC2396]; this means it can have a
	fragment identifier and can be relative. A relative URI should
	be resolved into an absolute URI during namespace processing:
	the namespace URIs of expanded-names of nodes in the data model
	should be absolute. Two expanded-names are equal if they have the
	same local part, and either both have a null namespace URI or
	both have non-null namespace URIs that are equal."

	-- http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116#dt-expanded-name

I think everybody agrees it's unfortunate that these two W3C
Recommendations
are inconsistent.

The disagreement is on which one should be treated as a mistake
to be fixed, and which one is to be recommended.

(in case it's not clear: I think the wording in the XPath spec
is OK, and the mistake is in the Namespace spec.)



-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Saturday, 20 May 2000 20:23:58 UTC