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On Mon, 5 May 2003 10:43:02 -0700, Andrew Layman <andrewl@microsoft.com>
wrote:
> Regarding the statement that "... the 'unenlightened' but influential
> folks in Redmond WA ... are voting with their feet for URNs ..."
>
> I am always happy to become more enlightened. With that in mind, I have
> two questions:
The 'unenlightened' bit should have had some sort of emoticon. (Recall the
attempt at a joke about Zen running through the post!) I was under the
impression that MS was taking the lead in pragmatically treating namespace
names as URN identifiers and avoiding the disputes among the gurus about
all this. So, if the "enlightened" folks are those who can follow all the
discussion about the use of "#" in URIs irrespective of concrete
representations and the ways of distinguishing the RDDL description of a
resource from the URI of a RDDL document itself, then "unenlightened"
people just use a URN and get on with life. It was *not* a slur!
>
> 1. I am not aware of this trend. What evidence has led you to this
> conclusion? Is there any contrary evidence?
I think the responses disabused me of that opinion. I was referring to the
heavy use of URNs in early versions of the Office 11 beta and to the Draft
US Gov't XML guidelines (I don't have the reference handy, but Paul Cotton
brought it to the TAG's attention). I have been informed that there is a
movement toward HTTP URIs as namespaces as Office 11 has evolved (perhaps
because there is useful information at the end of those URIs), and pushback
on the US gov't XML guidelines.
I do however agree with Dare that the "rank and file" would be much happier
overall if the "identity" and "address of additional information" aspects
of namespaces were separated, and with Norm that the derefereneability of
namespace URIs is a morass that we should just stay away from.
>
> 2. A brief perusal of this thread has not led me to a simple, clear
> explanation of what the issue under discussion is
This thread is an example of why one should simply beat one's head against
the wall when the XML world gets frustrating (or get a life, of course) and
avoid posting to xml-dev with unproductive rants! If I haven't apologized
for that before now, I'm doing it now. I was just noting the third
anniversary (more or less) of the focus on sorting out URIs and how they
should be used within the W3C (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-
uri/2000May/0000.html), and the apparent fact (noted on the TAG public
list) that XML itself has been dragged into the morass and brought to a
halt. There was no simple clear explanation, just a primal scream that we
can't get past this mess.
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