Re: Inclusions and other gotchas (was:Re: inclusion)

At 03:06 PM 5/25/00 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
>Simon, I don't know if you're now satisfied that inclusions are not a problem
>with absolutizing namespace names, but your original message on this subject
>suggests that absolutization needs to plug a very leaky bucket.  The problem
>seems to be that you never know where the next leak will be, because the
whole
>process is fragile.  The last leak may have been found, or it may not have.

I didn't know where that argument was going to head, as far as pro- or
con-absolutization, but I think I successfully scared myself on the whole
thing.  Between the potential for inclusion complexities and cases where
there simply is no base URI, I'm not sure absolutization is generally safe
or always possible, at any layer.

>[...much good...]
>
>So I think that the literal interpretation of namespace names rather than
>absolutization has to be the way to go, for now.  

I keep landing there, even when I explore alternate paths.

>For the future I think there are two useful ways to go:
>
>1. Create a new scheme explicitly for the purpose of providing unique
namespace
>identifiers.   Or maybe an existing one will work -- I don't know.   But
>deprecate the use of URL for that purpose, be they relative or absolute.
That
>would not break the namespace spec and would avoid the misleading connotation
>that URL have.

This has been proposed a few times.  It might be worthwhile to simply go
ahead with a specification (IETF?) and see if it proves useful.

>2. Define additional attributes for attaching useful resources to an element.
>That's what some people mistakenly thought xmlns was supposed to do.  That
also
>would not break the namespace spec.

I'd like to see more work done here as well.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

Received on Thursday, 25 May 2000 16:47:35 UTC