Re: Namespace name: better to use URN or URL?

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

>> (The point has also been made that it's easier to create a unique URL than a
>> unique URN, but I'm not convinced that that's true.)

> Well, the UUID scheme would seem to contradict that.

Yes, but a namespace name is essentially the name of a vocabulary, and
something that you might expect users of that vocabulary to have to
write. On a good day I can remember the MathML and XSLT namespaces off
the top of my head, I doubt whether I'd ever remember a uuid based name.

Names based on the domain name system (http:// or mailto: etc) do have
the good properties of being relatively easy to generate (relatively)
uniquely and be memorable. They have the bad property of tempting the
designers of XML Schema to suggest that a schema validator might try to
use the URI for something which famously "is not a goal" of XML
Namespaces, but that's the price you pay, apparently.

David

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