infinite depth to namespaces

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

I'm starting to wonder once again if we'll ever escape the endless cycle
of discussion about Namespaces in XML.  In January, with the advent of
RDDL, I was feeling hopeful.

More recently, the unqualified-names-in-qualified-context has led us
back to circling round and round.  While I'm glad to some extent that my
filters produced real (and occasionally outraged) response, I also hoped
that they might in some way represent an escape from the complex
implications of the subject. By providing conversion from one view of
the naming universe to the other, I hoped that maybe we could evade the
problems.

However, it seems that there are many of us who are uninterested in
escape. Some would rather turn toward an equally endless subject, PSVI,
to build solutions they think will work for their particular needs.
Others simply don't mind the ambiguity involved in using unqualified
names, knowing that their software will deal with it.  (They don't seem
especially concerned about other people's software.)

Simple best-practice solutions are fairly easy to come up with, but
seemingly just as easy to shoot down, suggesting that there may never be
consensus on these issues.

I almost wonder if it would be worth quarantining namespace discussions
to a separate home.  I'm not sure that would work either, though.

Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com