xml-dev - Re: Begging the Question

[Joe English <jenglish@flightlab.com>]

Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> > [I wrote]:
> > [the assumption that] one should be able to to point a Web Browser
> > at them and retrieve something useful since they look like something one
> > might point a Web Browser at.  This assumption, while not unreasonable,
> > is explicitly disclaimed by the namespaces spec.
>
> Really?  Where?

In section 2, "It is not a goal that [the namespace name] be
directly usable for retrieval of a schema (if any exists)".
At least that's my interpretation of what that means.
(It doesn't say that they *can't* be dereferenced either,
only that one should not assume that they can be.)


> > The only way to make sense
> >   of most W3C specs -- RDF especially, but REC-xml-names is no exception
> >   -- is to take "resource" and "URI" as atomic ontological entities
> >   with "resource === URI" as an axiom.
>
> I disagree.  You give the RDF spec as an example.  CR-rdf-schema has some
> examples where the distinction between resource (XML element) and URI
> (reference fragment) is quite clear.  Search for "MaritalStatus".

Do you mean section 7.1?  Hm, I'm not seeing it.

> But I don't recall any W3C recs that impose this on the general case.

I don't think any of them really do; its' just that I get
hopelessly confused when reading them unless I make that assumption.


--Joe English

  jenglish@flightlab.com