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On Sat, 2002-08-03 at 10:49, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> Tim Bray wrote:
> > I think if I ever decided to edit this thing again, I would include
> > something along the lines of Amy's language, that namespace names are
> > strings which follow the syntactic rules for URI references, and that
> > making them dereferencable may be a good and useful practice but MUST
> > not be necessary for the base use case of disambiguation. -Tim
>
> IIRC, it was John Cowan rather than Amy (well, he said URI, not URI ref). At
> any rate, I think the latter part is the key. XMLNS should clearly say that
> it does not require resolution or retrieval for purposes of disambiguation,
> than string comparison is the only acceptable algorithm for this.
Ugh. I've been avoiding responses. My suggested change was to change
the statements that "a namespace name is a URI reference," wherever they
appear, to "a namespace name is not a URI reference." It's just a
string.
This is not because I think it's a good solution, but because I think it
reflects current reality. As it stands, you can't do *anything* useful
with a namespace name; it's just a string.
The solution that I *vastly* would prefer is to make namespace names URI
references. If they are URI references, then they follow the rules for
URI references, in terms of comparison for equality, and normalization.
This would mean that you'd have to actually look at the URI to see if
it's a known scheme, and if so, use the comparison rules of that scheme
(a lot of URL-style schemes are quite similar, if that makes a
difference, and are also the most widely used). This would mean that
http://www.talsever.com/ and http://www.Talsever.com/ compare equal.
So far as I know, no URI specification bases comparison for equality of
reference (of the URI, that is) on comparison for equality of the
referenced/retrieved resource. Actually looking something up is
irrelevant.
The drawback to making namespace names actually *be* URI references,
rather than strings that bear a strong resemblance to URI references but
no shared behavior at all, is that inconsistent results may occur,
depending upon whether the parser recognizes the scheme. An
unrecognized scheme can only be compared, as now, character-by-character
for equality with no normalization, no case-insensitivity. So a parser
that does recognize the scheme may give different results than a parser
that does not.
> If XMLNS were to change to make the strings syntactically URI refs, would it
> not require a change of the edict forbidding relative namespaces? Not that I
> know anything abou that edict except through rumor.
"relative string" is fairly meaningless, as things now stand. With a
change, "relative URI" might have meaning.
Amy!
--
Amelia A. Lewis amyzing@talsever.com alicorn@mindspring.com
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
-- Tormer's Lay [Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness"]
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