Re: [xml-dev] RE: Namespaces Best Practice

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

> It's the kind of problem humans are generally good at solving but which 
> take some algorithmic tree-trickery to solve efficiently on a computer.

Tree-trickery may not be possible in the context of stream
based processing.  Sometimes "minimizing the decls" isn't
an achievable goal.  You may end up adding a few decls
in case they're needed later, but it turns out they aren't.

"Minimizing the decls" is a global optimization problem,
or an interesting way to compare policies.  The problem
may not need to be solved; even when people look at
the documents directly, it's not the same as "easy to
understand" (which is an individualized issue, also very
context-dependant, that sometimes values redundancy).


> Finally, I don't think variable-scoping is a useful comparison for 
> namespace-scoping in XML documents. 

I was going for accuracy in explaining the name binding rules.
Actually using those names is a different issue.


>        Variable  scoping  is nicely contained by the logic of program
> flow, while namespace scoping may be much more arbitrary.

I guess I don't see that.  They're both used to characterize data;
the scoping requirements aren't very different.  (The same values
can be found in many variables ...)  Or are you maybe suggesting
that most documents don't have lots of namespaces in use, while
most programs have many variables?

- Dave