Re: Presumption of XML's Stability (was RE: XML Blueberry(non-ASCIIname characters in Japan))

[Tom Bradford <bradford@dbxmlgroup.com>]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> In fact, the WG succeeded way beyond what they could have plausibly expected. Necessary extensions like namespaces, schemas, XLink, XML Base, and more have all been able to be built on top of XML 1.0 without changing XML 1.0. 

I disagree.  Namespaces absolutely change XML 1.0.  Maybe not directly,
but such an indirect modification has completely changed how you work
with XML.  If prefixes were unique, like the URIs they map to, then how
you work with XML wouldn't really have to change.  Unfortunately, as it
is, if you approach Documents from a pure XML 1.0 standpoint (without
knowledge of namespaces), the fact that you can't depend on a prefix
being consistent between documents effectively breaks XML 1.0...  Even
though according to the namespace specification they are the same.  It's
definitely a backwards incompatible addition, and should be part of an
XML 1.1 if only for clarity.

-- Tom