RE: How to represent fixed namespace attributes?

Thanks Jeni, for your detailed and thorough response. Your answer
confirmed our suspicions and also helped clarify some namespace concepts
in our minds.

I suppose we were pulled into the "namespace as attribute" trap because
of DTD validator's ignorance of namespaces. Or, put another way, the
insistence of DTD-based validating parsers to treat anything that looks
like an attribute to be declared in the DTD, even if it is actually a
namespace declaration.

We much prefer being in a namespace-aware environment, but currently we
need to be in both worlds (DTD and XML Schema) for a given XML instance
and that causes some headaches at first. Our current resolution is to
declare a set of potential namespace qualifiers as attributes in the DTD
(without fixed values) so that their existence in the XML instance
doesn't cause DTD validation errors. That way the same XML instance can
be validated against a DTD and against an XML Schema. But, this approach
still seems to be a bit of a hack since we are locking in a set of
"allowed" prefixes into the DTD.

Is there a better way for an XML instance to play nicely in both DTD and
XML Schema worlds?

Thanks again.

Pete
--------
Pete Beazley         mailto:pete@clearlyonline.com
ClearlyOnline, Inc.  http://www.clearlyonline.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jeni Tennison
> Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 5:49 PM
> To: Pete Beazley
> Cc: xmlschema-dev@w3.org
> Subject: Re: How to represent fixed namespace attributes?
> 
> I just wanted to clarify what you're aiming to do here, since fixing
> namespace declarations using ATTLIST declarations in a DTD really has
> three outcomes:

<snip>

Received on Monday, 25 February 2002 06:59:24 UTC