xml-dev - Re: foo:space instead of xml:space?

[ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)]

With respect and concern, since going up against Tim _and_ Andrew is
pretty risky at the best of times, I think it's crucial that I be
allowed to use whatever prefix I like for the
'http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace' namespace.
Just because it's magic 'forwards' (i.e. xml: always works, without a
declaration), doesn't mean it has to be magic 'backwards' (i.e. the
only prefix allowed for that NS URI is 'xml').  To do that seems to me 
to take away one of the fundamental designed-in flexibilities of the
Namespace REC, namely that prefixes are for _my_ convenience.

It would require a significant and messy change to XML Schema as
currently spec'ed to impose this restriction: as it stands we treat
the XML namespace like any other (indeed there's a thread running
elsewhere about the XML Schema document which now lives at
http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace.xsd), and the schema document for
XML Schemas itself (at http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema.xsd) uses
'x:' for importing and declaring xml:lang.

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
     2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
	    Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
		     URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/