xml-dev - Re: Paul has volunteered (was Re: Overloaded URIs must GO!)

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> In the case of namespace URIs, we're looking at a different use domain
> (naming XML elements and attributes), not just a logical loophole.

If a spec makes a normative reference to XML then it gets whatever
semantics are embedded in the XML specification. If the infoset was part
of XML as it may be one day then they would get those semantics. And if
there is an entity reference then they can't complain if a parser for
their app makes a network transaction to resolve the entity.

If they wanted to use only the syntax and override all or some of the
semantics (e.g. ignore entity references) then they could do that. But the
namespaces spec builds on the semantics of URIs -- it is the very
semantics of URIs that make them unique. Without those semantics I could
build an http://www.megginson.com/foo namespace URI without impunity. 

"It's just a damn string", I would cry, "ignore what the URL spec. says it
means!" 

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

"Silence," wrote Melville, "is the only Voice of God." The assertion,
like its subject, cuts both ways, negating and affirming, implying both
absence and presence, offering us a choice; it's a line that the Society
of American Atheists could put on its letterhead and the Society of
Friends could silently endorse while waiting to be moved by the spirit
to speak. - Listening for Silence by Mark Slouka, Apr. 1999, Harper's

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