xml-dev - RE: Namespaces and DTDs

[Ronald Bourret <rbourret@ito.tu-darmstadt.de>]

james anderson wrote:

> ? which of the "namespace aware" parsers will permit you to parse 
validate a
> document for which partions of the dtd contain element declarations with
> ambiguous names - without first modifying the dtd? i've yet to hear a 
solution
> to the "ambiguous name" problem for xml-1.0/+ns conforming parsers.

Good point -- it was unfair of me to blame the parsers here.  It all seems 
rather obvious now:

Q. Why were namespaces invented?
A. To disambiguate duplicate names.

Q. I have a DTD with duplicate names.  How do I disambiguate them?
A. Use namespaces.

The only inobvious bit is that, because there is no way to declare 
namespaces in the DTD, you can't declare different default namespaces for 
different parts of the DTD, which would have solved Elliotte's problem 
rather neatly.

-- Ron Bourret


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