xml-dev - Re: why distinctions within XHTML?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 11:38 AM 8/30/99 -0400, Ann Navarro wrote:
>At 11:18 AM 8/30/99 -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>>It seems like DOCTYPE and the three DTDs should handle this without any
>>problem.  I can't figure out why you'd want to bring namespaces into this.
>>I could write an editor that recognized the namespace and did processing
>>based on the namespace, but I think DOCTYPE would be simpler.  I don't
>>think namespaces have to do this work.
>
>Well, that really points out a weakness in namespaces, doesn't it? 
>Everything must now have a namespace if it's to be compliant in XML-land.
>Therefore XHTML has to have (a) namespace(s). 
>
>Boom. We have to deal with them. 

I'm glad that XHTML is trying to use namespaces.  I don't think this
justifies the move to three namespaces, however.

>>So do I - but I don't think this requires namespaces.
>
>Me neither, but apparently they make the world go around these days. 

I didn't think we were discussing fashion here - this doesn't seem like
enough justification to use namespaces in this way.

>XHTML 1.0 is the very first step, taking the 3 versions we had in HTML 4.0
>and transforming them into the XML world. 

That's fine and good and conservative, however ridiculous I may find three
versions overall.  That doesn't mean we have to compound the existence of
three different DTDs with three different namespaces.

>Nothing in this says that work immediately after XHTML 1.0 will have all
>three. 

Good.


Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer (2nd Ed - September)
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies
http://www.simonstl.com

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