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- From: Robert La Quey <robertl1@home.com>
- To: <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 19:40:54 -0800
<boblq>
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
Is it really a 'good thing' to have namespaces in XML?
</quote>
Probably not as defined by W3 in the current rec, but ...
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Reynolds</lastname>
<firstname>Gregg</firstname>
</author>
Do you mean "a means of scoping names, so that a local, apparently atomic
name can be mapped to a universal name"? Yes.
</quote>
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
What ill effect will it have on XML's future?
<quote>
Like all unnecessary complexity it gets in the way of thinking
clearly about the problem one is trying to solve.
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
Why can't the semantic of '<name>' be determined purely by context?
</quote>
It can. An "elements only" argument was given earlier.
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Seivers</lastname>
<firstname>Kent</firstname>
</author>
As evidence of this I give
1) almost every other object oriented language in existence.
author.name.firstname = 'joe' is easy to understand, and,
behind the scenes, since even even an INT is an object
and even an "=" is a function, is entirely done in the
spirit of "elements only" and
2) the obvious nature of everyones first XML tutorial in which
they are typically shown something like
<author><firstname>joe<firstname/><author/> and
understand it completely.
</quote>
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
What is wrong with using just <html> to distinguish
HTML's use of 'a' tag?
</quote>
Nothing in a fully qualified (hierarchical, See Clark Evan's remarks and
example above) context. The <boblq> tag would disambiguate the <html>.
>Is the ability to inject attributes from other namespaces really useful?
No.
<sigh>
Yes ... but for legacy reasons
</sigh>
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
What is the positive effect of having just one namespace?
</quote>
The systematic development of a taxonomic hierarchy closely related
to semantics would follow from having a consistant syntax. As it is,
folks are hiding like ostrichs from this problem which syntax will
never solve.
<quote>
<author>
<lastname>Park</lastname>
<firstname>Don</firstname>
</author>
Why can't we have central registry of XML names?
</quote>
Good question. Better question, Why can't we have a distributed
registry? Actually I think, in some sense, as David Meggison has pointed
out such a registration mechanism is the essense of the W3 name identification
mechanism which is one part of the rec that I do like.
So I suggest following Don's suggestion:
purchase {http://www.w3.org/ns/} default definition
{http://www.sun.com/ns/} variant
{http://www.ibm.com/ns/} variant
{http://www.amazon.com/ns/} variant
where the variants are diffs from the default. I would hope the W3 is
a decent place to get the "default definition" adjudicated. Certainly
W3 is not Network Solutions ;( but than it is not the IETF either.
I believe the Jabber guys are working a distributed namespace management
system for their own purposes but I have not reviewed it. A Jabberite
might care to comment.
</boblq>
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