Re: [xml-dev] UTF-8+names

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

On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 09:45, Joern Clausen wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 05:17:09PM +1000, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> > That is one design flaw in only having a single delimiter for named 
> > references:
> 
> I don't think that is a flaw. I repeat my question, which was not
> answered yet: Why are only elements and attributes subject to a
> namespace definition, but not entities? Has this been discussed while
> preparing the Namespaces REC, and was it decided not to go this way for
> any good reason? Pointers to mail archives are welcome.

Namespaces in XML have been designed as an additional layer on top of
XML: a document which is conform to namespaces is not only conform with
XML but you can also implement a namespace aware parser as a layer on
top of a non namespace aware parser.

In other words, the XML (namespace aware) Infoset could have been
defined as an addition to a XML non namespaces aware Infoset if there
had been one: namespaces do only impact the markup of the document and
have no influence on its content.

Namespaces aware entities would have broken this rule (the content would
have been changed by the namespaces) and probably made the adoption of
namespaces more difficult.  

<rant>
Now, people using QNames in elements and attribute do also break this
rule which is why I think that it's such a bad idea.
</rant>

Eric
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Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
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