Re: Resource Gloss (Human Readable)

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 04:10 2001 01 04 +0800, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
>...I completely disagree that there should be any
>expectation of human-readable documentation an http: Namespace URI ref.
>What should be retrievable should be up to the discretion of the information
>provider as long as it can be fitted into a general conceptual framework.
>Even XML Schemas will sometimes be downloaded (e.g. to supply attribute
>defaults),  so to force an extra indirection imposes too much.
>
>I like the rddl:resource  element and, obviously, I think it is good to have
>a directory format for related resources, but I don't like the idea that
>namepace "ought" to equal ExplicitRDDL.  I really don't like the idea of
>partitioning the world into "RDDL-using XML" and "non-RDDL-ing XML",
>especially when allowing freedom can be reconciled so easily.
>
>I don't see that RDDL "solves" the namespaces problem, because the problem
>is not "what is the best thing a namespace URL ought to point to?" but "how
>do we support what people are doing and want to do with namespace URIs?"   I
>am not sure how RDDL can flourish if it ignores the people who actually are
>overloading the namespace URI for retrieving useful things now.

Whether a namespace name itself resolves to a RDDL, an XML Schema, some
human-readable documentation, or *nothing* shouldn't be the question.
That problem can be solved--at a user level, a local system level, or
a more global level--by using a NAMESPACE entry in an XML Entity
Resolution catalog (xmlcat) to point the namespace name (even a
relative one, I might add!) to whatever resource you wish.  I believe
this makes allowance for all possible current uses of namespace names.

The fact that we are currently defining a format for a resource discovery
directory (that might be a useful thing for some namespace names to
resolve to from time to time) shouldn't be confused with the fact that
a namespace name is still defined by the two-year old "Namespaces in XML"
Recommendation.

paul