Re: URIs and information typing

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Henry S. Thompson wrote:

> Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net> writes:
>
> <snip/>
>
> > right, so: "xsd:unsignedInt" is just shorthand for
> > http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema#unsignedInt -- which is references a
> > location in the XML Schema schema <simpleType id="unsignedInt">... ?
>
> Lest anyone misunderstand, this is _not_ the status quo in the W3C XML
> Schema public working drafts.  The former ("xsd:unsignedInt") is
> defined to be the name 'unsignedInt' in the namespace named by the URI
> associated with the 'xsd' prefix in the inscope namespace
> declarations, and hence to refer by statue, as it were, to the builtin
> 'unsignedInt' derived datatype.  The latter
> (http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema#unsignedInt) is a uriReference
> which resolves, provided the returned resource is the schema document
> for schemas, and its mime type is as expected text/xml or
> application/xml, to a <simpleType> element in that document, courtesy
> of an attribute of type ID with the value 'unsignedInt' on that
> element.

This URI reference could just as easily resolve to a prose description of
the "unsignedInt" basic datatype in a HTML document. The URI reference names
an XML Schema unsignedInt regardless of what is retrieved from time to time
at the end of the URI reference.

And lest anyone misunderstand me, I am proclaiming as loudly and as often as
I am given the opportunity, that there *ought* to be an explicit equivalence
between the QName "xsd:unsignedInt" and the URI reference:
http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema#unsignedInt -- indeed I suppose you
would correctly and strongly object if I suggested that this URI were to
refer to the concept "string" in the XML Schema namespace. Aside from XML
Schema in particular, XML in general (particularly on the Web) needs to have
a unified view of QNames with respect to URI references.

I'm going to invoke the law of common sense to state that the QName
"xsd:unsignedInt" is equivalent to this URI reference.

>
> Needless to say, these are _not_ the same thing, although
> the XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes draft does identify this as a URI
> reference which may be used to identify this type in places other than
> schemas.
>

And seeing this I was hoping that my own view of QNames and URI references
was the view being implicitly put forward by XML Schema datatypes.

-Jonathan