Re: Namespaces, schemas, Simon's filters.

[Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@rpbourret.com>]

Richard Tobin wrote:
> 
> There are two points in dispute: whether local elements are good at
> all, and whether unqualified ones are (no doubt there is also a view
> that *only* unqualified ones are good, but I haven't noticed anyone
> arguing that).

Local elements are definitely "good at all" -- they clearly have uses in
some areas. I'm much less convinced about unqualified ones, although I
now vaguely understand the reasoning behind them. I would add a third
question: are local elements worth the trouble?

One of the useful things about this conversation was Matthew's note of
how it paralleled the uproar about how namespaces broke SAX, DOM, etc.
and how they imposed a new set of partitions on names that didn't
previously exist. It certainly points out where some of my knee-jerk
reactions are coming from.

For me, the difference was that I was absolutely convinced of the
necessity for namespaces, while I'm not convinced of the necessity of
the "new namespaces" imposed by local element types. In some ways, this
is odd, as the work I do (mapping databases to DTDs) could benefit from
them.

One other question: when the namespaces spec came out, it was
immediately obvious to me what was broken and how to fix it. Does
anybody have a clear idea of what things local element types "break" and
how to fix them?

-- Ron