xml-dev - Re: Fw: Namespaces

[James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>]

Mark Birbeck wrote:

> The XML 1.0 or
> parser 'view' of the data looks at elements and attributes, their values
> and their relationships to each other. The 'post-parser' view is of the
> same information but from the perspective of which namespace an element
> or attribute belongs to.

I would say that the difference between the view that the parser gives
you and the view that the post-parser (namespace processor) gives you is
simply that, in the post-parser view, element and attribute names can be
qualified by a URI. There is no need to make it any more complex than
that.

All this stuff about namespaces is just unnecessary, confusing
complexity that invites the over-analysis that is so prevalent in this
forum.  If the spec was called something like "XML Universal Names" and
never mentioned the word "namespace" and didn't include Appendix A
(which thankfully is not normative), absolutely no functionality would
have been lost and I think there would have been far less confusion.

I've updated my note

 http://www.jclark.com/xml/xmlns.htm

to try to address some of the comments I've received.

James


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)