RE: [xml-dev] Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu] 
Sent: Sun 6/16/2002 2:44 PM 
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs

>Yes, I read all that. However, document conformance is defined by
>Section 6 which states:
>
>In XML documents which conform to this specification, element types
>and attribute names must match the production for QName and must
>satisfy the "Namespace Constraints".
>
>That's it. The next couple of paragraphs elaborate this, but do not
>add any further constraints. Since the URI reference is not part of
>the BNF grammar or a namespace constraint, it seems possible to claim
>conformance with non-URI values.

I looked at the errata for the Names in XML REC at http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-names-19990114-errata and couldn't find anywhere this was clarified so I have to agree with you that the REC seems to imply that XML documents containing non-URI values as values for namespace names are conformant. I assume this is the only reason WebDAV can get away with its non-URI namespace name[0] and still claim conformance. 
 
[0] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/relax-ng/200111/msg00032.html