Re: Moving on (was Re: URIs quack like a duck)

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:

> At 10:02 PM 5/29/00 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
> >Almost.  The problem I see is that if we follow (1), which at this point I
> more
> >or less agree with, then there's a nasty inconsistency between the namespace
> >spec and the definition of expanded names in the XPath spec.  The working
> group
> >you speak of would have to look at, and propose revisions to, all specs that
> >are impacted by the string-literal interpretation of namespace names, not
> just
> >the namespace spec itself.  XPath is an instance but  not the only one.
> XBase
> >is another.
>
> I'd leave XPath as is, claiming that it's a layer built _on top of_
> Namespaces in XML and can therefore do as it pleases.  The W3C might also
> want to reopen XPath if this seems grossly inconsistent, but that's them.

That's the part that makes me uncomfortable and that I see as the consequence
of  the fact that some URIs (ones that start with http, anyway) quack like a
duck, i.e., have the connotation of locating specific retrievable textual
resources.    I could accept the idea of namespaces being taken purely literally
as expressed in the namespace spec, though I originally thought it mistaken.
But these contradictions trouble me, even if layering is used as a reason to
ignore them.

> XBase has the advantage of still being in development, with an active
> Working Group, so let them figure out how this works...

There's another piece of the puzzle that needs to be filled in: having some more
or less standard way of attaching metadata to namespaces.  That's what I
originally understood (according to the duck principle) that the namespace name
did.   TimBL initiated this whole brouhaha because that was his expectation also
(Tim, correct me if I'm wrong on that).  I think we need another attribute for
that purpose, and I nominate xmlmd:foo for the job.

Paul Abrahams

Received on Tuesday, 30 May 2000 11:01:52 UTC