xml-dev - Re: processing instructions def.

["James Tauber" <jtauber@jtauber.com>]

> 1. The old XML WG considered allowing PI targets to be
>    Namespace-qualified, but in the end there wasn't enough demand, and
>    the shift to attribute-based NS declarations would have killed that
>    anyway.
>
> 2. Various people have suggested following a lead from recent SGML
>    developments and requiring the PI target to be a notation name.
>    Since notations are almost never used in the XML world, that might
>    be a non-starter.

But, as I've argued many times, the whole notation mechanism is *very*
similar to namespaces anyway. Both notations and namespaces involve a
mapping of a local name to a universal identifier. The only real difference
is that namespaces are used to make element and attribute names universal
and notations are used to make PI targets, unparsed entity content types and
PCDATA content types universal.

Compare:

<... xmlns:fop="http://xml.apache.org/fop/">
...
<fop:foo>...</fop:foo>

to

<!NOTATION fop SYSTEM "http://xml.apache.org/fop/">
...
<?fop bar?>

Exactly the same principal. Different mechanism.

James


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