Re: [xml-dev] Global or shared namespace?

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Ronald Bourret wrote:

> Eric van der Vlist wrote:
> 
>>
>>Considering that elements which do not belong to any namespace belong to a
>>global, shared or default namespace and giving it a name might be confusing
>>since people could think that "{http://whatever.org/global/namespace}foo";
>>can be compared to "{http://whatever.org/global/namespace}foo"; which is
>>not always legitim and "{[no value]}foo" may give a better indication that
>>there might be a problem.
>>
> 
> This seems like circular reasoning to me. The reason we have namespaces
> is so we can determine that one foo is different from another foo. If we
> don't use namespaces, or if we assign all non-namespaced names to some
> sort of global URI, we (obviously) can't determine this. I guess I don't
> see an issue here.


I don't either but was trying to find a reason why this could break 
something.

>>With W3C XML Schema and the possibility to define different content models
>>and different semantics to the same element type, the usage of the element
>>type as a "name" seems to be broken.
>>
> 
> This returns to the question of local vs. global elements in W3C
> Schemas. I, for one, am not willing to reopen this :)


I am not sure that it's exactly the same issue.

Whether W3C XML Schema acknowledges it or not, the concept of "element 
type" as defined by XML 1.0 is still something relevant and to qualify 
element types is still the main goal of XML.

I think it's another indication that W3C XML Schema is an intrusive spec 
which does not stand still upon XML 1.0 and namespaces in XML 1.0 but 
tries to modify our perception of these specs. In other words, it's not 
a "good citizen" in the world of W3C specifications ;=) ...

To come back to the element types, to restrict the element types to 
global elements only seems a major rewrite of both XML 1.0 and 
namespaces in XML. OTH, if we don't do this restriction, element types 
doesn't seem to have any match in the W3C XML Schema data model which I 
find quite broken as well.

Eric

> -- Ron

-- 
See you in Orlando for XML 2001.
                                     http://www.xmlconference.net/xmlusa/
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