xml-dev - Re: Overloaded URIs must GO!

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
>    Yes, but only by the IETF, unless the IETF starts assigning parts
>    of its URN namespace to other users.  XSL, for example, still
>    cannot use a URN for a namespace today.  As Paul mentioned later,
>    we could use an x-* URN namespace, but that's actually less safe
>    than a URL (it's not even guaranteed unique).

It's a question of balancing risk, standards conformance, etc.

Using an HTTP URL is wrong, unintuitive and will have bad practical
effects, even if it is safe from a uniqueness perspective.

>From a pragmatic point of view, using an experimental namespace is
uniqueness-safe even if it is not save from a theoretical point of view.

If we, today, establish the x-mldev namespace then the chances of anyone
accidently intruding on it are incredibly small. So SAX would use:

urn:x-mldev://www.sax.org/features/blahblahblah

(if you have registered the SAX domain)

Besides, if we submit an internet draft for an hname: namespace then
nobody is going to go off and invent a clashing one by accident. It's a
question of us taking a little bit of extra effort to do the right thing.
(I'm holding my breath here lest I get stuck with the job...If someone did
it would people use it?)

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Alabama's constitution is 100 years old, 300 pages long and has more than
600 amendments. Highlights include "Amendment 393: Amendment of Amendment
No.  351", "Validation of Laws Regulating Court Costs in Randolph County",
"Miscegenation laws", "Bingo Games in Russell County", "Suppression
of dueling".  - http://www.legislature.state.al.us/ALISHome.html

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