RE: XML Public Indentifier

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

At 01:56 PM 05/09/01 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>If the author of the namespace spec can say 
>on one hand that it is just a label, and on 
>the other hand can say he won't use a URN 
>that can't be dereferenced,  isn't that a 
>contradiction?

They don't *need* to point to anything to do the job
for which they were defined.  They are just labels.

Labels that can be dereferenced to get something to
tell you something about the namespace, in the case
where you don't know anything, are better than those 
that can't [in some applications at least]. 

I didn't realize this when we were doing the namespace
work, and at that time would have been friendlier to 
URNs than I am now.  But RDDL [or something like it]
seems awfully useful in a namespace-dense world, which
seems to be the one we're getting. -Tim