RE: [xml-dev] XHTML 2 Working Group won't be renewed?

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> > I agree that's one of the problems, and fixing it would actually 
> > require no change to the specs, just a change in working practices.
> > [...] But there are plenty of other problems, notably the impact of 
> > namespace declarations on the data model (in-scope prefix bindings 
> > need to be retained in the data model just in case anyone 
> happens to 
> > be using prefixes in element or attribute content.)
> 
> That's for applications like XSL or XSD, right? Probably for 
> all XML relating to the structure of other XML. After all, 
> how would you do it if not in content?
> 
> What's the alternative to scopedness? One global scope?
> 

I think it would have been better not to have prefixes at all. They cause a
lot of the complexity in the model. Declare all the namespaces, perhaps with
document scope, and perhaps allowing the "document type" to define the set
of namespaces implicitly; require each namespace to have a definition that
defines all the local names present in the namespace; require any reference
to a name that's present in more than one of the namespaces to be explicitly
qualified with the namespace name. And then use shorter namespace names,
along the lines of Java package names, so that writing the full name is
typically 40 characters rather than 120.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay