Re: Copyrighting schemas, Hailstorm (strayed a bit)

[Joel Rees <rees@server.mediafusion.co.jp>]

Jeff Lowery responded:

[snipped]

> So yes, a namespace is just a labeled set of names, but the whole point of
> the namespace's existence is the semantics that are there, hidden away in
> some past conversation or some associated documentation, or (partly) in
some
> schema somewhere. Otherwise, why would George ever bother to "treat" the
> data associated with the namespaces names at all? They'd just represent
> random noise.
[snipped]

I'm not a mathematician, nor, apparently, a real programmer, just a balding
wannabe.

But the old saw that words have no inherent meaning is only a truism. You
have to properly qualify such statements to make sense:

    Words have no inherent meaning independent of context.
    But words carry more or less of their context in their structure.

Namespaces may not have been intended as such, but they will be used
(unwittingly?) as references to context. The reason I asked whether
namespaces could be nested is that I perceive contexts as nesting, and being
able to nest the references to context will allow preserving more structure,
thus more context. Even though we can't fully derive the original context
from the clues that the structure of nested namespaces would provide, it
will provide better tools for checking the context.

I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, BTW.

Joel Rees
jreesmf@mac.com