xml-dev - Re: Toward the self-describing web [was: Irony heaped on irony]

[John Robert Gardner <jrgardn@emory.edu>]

On Thu, 18 May 2000, David Carlisle wrote:
> 
> > In a syntactic, but not semantic sense.  This line of argument presumes no
> > judicatory relevance in dissenting opinions by Supreme Court Justices.
> 
> I don't see this as a good analogy. The point at issue is not "what is a
> namespace" in the abstract, or in the law of the United States, but 
> "how are namespaces defined in the W3C namespace rec"

Granted, this analogy resolves, perhaps, a "straw man" fallacy--not quite,
but close, to a rhetorical 404--on my part as stated, viewed in
retrospect.  To fuss the analogy to better state my point on the ref. to
dissentions and on the issue as a whole:

 "Roe v. Wade" is a meaningful term for which many socially-conscious
mental processors (a.k.a., individuals), can now supply ample meaning
"schemas" (pro or con).  "Roe v. Wade" is also a "namespace" for a supreme
court case which, when researched, would contain dissenting opinions which
provide --for some additional social conscious processing, to follow the
analogy-- additional detailed information for understanding a conversation
node wherein Foo says "That's a Roe-v-Wade debate waiting to happen."  
For most, it namespaces adequately.  For some, e.g., Bar, a nuance from
teh dissenting opinions would add if there was particular rhetorical
processing weight ascribed to this namespacing of "debate," for Bar
viz.--perhaps, a long history with -- Foo, the lookup of the namespace is
important -- e.g., that it resolves to a court case, dissentions and all.

However, and I misrepresented myself if I sounded like I felt that
namespaces should be REQUIRED to resolve:

> But this
> 
> > I think that sentence gets exploited to suggest that it's OK
> > to use http://example.org/foo as a namespace name and then
> > allow 404s for requests to that address, and so we should
> > take it out if/when we next revise the Namespace spec.
> 
> suggestion that there _must_ be a resource, at the namesapce uri
> would just be a complete change in the way namespaces work.

Imagine Foo's comment-processing-time if all of teh Roe-v-Wade
deliberation and contingent debate were necessarily to be "processed" by
every hearer, especially those more disinterested than Bar, they would be
excluded or overburdened with processing of teh discussion due to Bar,
from whose pedantics they were disassociated (they would be, for instance,
the dis-Bar'd?).

So . . . .

> implemented products and written documents  taking the
> w3c namespace rec on good faith, it is rather uncomfortable to see
> senior figures in w3c suggesting undermining the basic principle
> on which xml namespaces work which is that it does _not_ imply any
> lookup of the namespace name. (But does not of course forbid that
> something may in fact be there.)

. . . agreed, but, N.B.:

> 
> This implication that two namespace names which have URI pointing to
> identical copies of a schema document are in any way the same

. . . but this phrase above is not over clear.  

respectfully,

johnrobert


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