RE: [xml-dev] namespaces (was RE: [xml-dev] rss regularis(z)ation)

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

Debating the pros and cons of XML namespaces is like arguing about whether the internal combustion engine is a good idea. The world has moved on. 
 
Hopefully XML-DEV will catch on to this in a few years. 

________________________________

From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
Sent: Tue 7/22/2003 5:43 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] namespaces (was RE: [xml-dev] rss regularis(z)ation)



david@megginson.com (David Megginson) writes:
>Danny Ayers writes:
>
> > A lot of the arguments I've heard against XML namespaces end with
> > "...but I'll use them if I have to...", so I'm not sure about the
> > toxicity. But in the context of RDF they make so much sense I
> > personally find it hard to understand the objections. But (as has
> > been joyfully pointed out here before) RDF/XML is hardly typical
> > XML. So is there a bad smell to namespaces? Maybe.
>
>Most list members have probably done a fair bit of playing around with
>XSLT and XSL-FO, and -- if they are still able to read this message --
>have survived XML Namespaces at least that far.

I see we're veering into permathread territory.  Maybe we need a
placeholder entry on "namespaces" that we can point to every time
someone asks what's good/bad about namespaces.  Here's one attempt.

Good:

1) Long names help disambiguate markup components

2) Long names are easier to process in some APIs than more intricate
context information.

Bad:

1) What's that URI really mean? Don't ask, or we'll never get home.  In
fact, it's probably better not to ask _anything_ about URIs, or we'll
all end up on www-tag[1], with its 288 mostly URI-permathread messages
this month alone.

2) Scoping makes for a strange set of issues, littering the landscape
with extra declarations or making it difficult to do simple
cut-and-paste with XML documents.

3) While most tools now understand namespaces and namespace
declarations, many programmers still use local names even in very
namespace-specific contexts.  For one very small example of this, see
[2], but I've encountered this practice constantly.  I think that XSLT
is the only programming space where this practice is rare, and that's
because the tool doesn't work with local names alone.  (Figuring that
out causes beginners a lot of pain, but once they're past it, they're
likely better XML practitioners.)

4) QNames in content seems to be an ever-expanding mess, with no means
in sight for a normalization method that makes them context-independent.
(That's largely because there's no simple mapping between QNames and
URIs - hashes vs. slashes keeps that complicated.)

To me, the bad factors outweigh the good, but I too have "survived
namespaces" and implemented support for them in the code I've built.
(Perversely, I'm even considering extending namespace support to entity
names in a current project.)  That said, I don't look on "survived" as a
badge of pride - it's more that I've come to terms with toxic sludge in
our collective basement which we can't afford to clean up.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/

[2] http://www.tbray.org/tag/rddl/r2n3.pl, referenced with a broken link
from http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jun/0004.html .

--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>

The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/

To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>