xml-dev - Re: Bring back src? (was Re: simple question on namespaces.)

[Dan Brickley <Daniel.Brickley@bristol.ac.uk>]

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
[..]
> Maybe we could finally break the cycle of namespace violence by
> re-examining the decision to drop the src pseudo-attribute, which appears
> to have happened between the 18-May-1998 draft of Namespaces in XML
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xml-names-19980518) and the 16-September-1998
> draft (http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xml-names-19980916).
> 
> It seems that we have a problem involving overloading an identifier with
> behavior, and that separating the behavior from the identifier might
> plausibly let us get on with our real work rather than debating the nature
> of identifiers.

I really have difficulty here seeing a reason to special-case for
schemata (I'd rather have richer content-negotiation facilities,
see [1]) since similar issues arise for all sorts of information. 
But assuming for sake of argumentativeness that we *do* want
to associate a namespace URI with another more concrete, task/behaviour
oriented URI, why should we want to pepper our instance data with this
information? Sure there are lots of things one might want to say about a
namespace; a few XML elements / RDF properties would be useful, eg. 'see
also' or 'publisherPublicKeyFingerprint'. But that doesn't make the case
for making a special infrastructural home for this information. Why use
xmlnssrc:prefix="..." when one might just write out a description of the
namespace in plain XML? 

<namespace>
<identifier>http://example.com/xmlns/myvocab</identifier>
<iduseful>0</iduseful> <!-- can one do a GET on the identifier? ;) -->
<prefPrefix>my</prefPrefix>
<description>Some namespace or other</description>
<seeAlso>http://example.org/useful/retrievable-stuff-about-myvocab</seeAlso>
<ownerFingerprint>FA0C 0D5A 2B3F 808D AA28  2B63 3E15 EF2F 7322 8FE4</ownerFingerprint>
<pressRelease>http://example.com/2000/12/29/my-vocab-press</pressRelease>
</namespace>

...whatever. Point being that 'src' (FWIW I prefer 'seeAlso') is just a
(rather boring) bit of meta-information about the namespace whose
identifier is 'http://example.com/xmlns/myvocab', and that there are
many other things one might want to say about that NS without having to
burden one's instance data with that info.
 
> Perhaps something like xmlnssrc:prefix="retrievable SRC URI"?
> 
> Not all namespaces would have to have it, but not all namespaces are
> intended for retrieval anyway.  It'd give us a much clearer line of
> demarcation as well.
> 
> Then we could fight about what lived at the end of SRC, but we're doing
> that anyway.

Heh :) Maybe we could have something like xmlnssrcformat:prefix="URI for
format of SRC URI"? 

<ducks/>

Or maybe we could better argue about the properties of namespaces
(seeAlso, publisher etc), rather than about the places in
XML documents where we expect to find that information...
 
Dan




[1] prior rambling on this...
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2000Aug/0052.html