Re: [xml-dev] Pragmatic namespaces

[Kurt Cagle <kurt.cagle@gmail.com>]

Although overall I'm in agreement with Micah on the implementation, I
still think that there should be a push back on the HTML community for
namespace support - or this particular architecture needs to be
extended to the XHTML 5 version as well. The danger I see is that
you'll continue to see vendors choose only to support the HTML only
version (thinking IE8 here specifically) event though both versions
should technically be supported, because of the potential of creating
lock-in on the default namespace set.

One additional possibility here might be to introduce a new HTML 5 header element called <extends>:

<extends namespace="namespaceURI" prefix="prefix" uses="elementSeq|*">

Yes,
this is a rogue namespace. The @uses attribute would contain either a
list of supported elements or would default to the total set of
elements (the default if @uses is not included. Elements in this
namespace would be used sans prefix identifiers, unless the need to
resolve conflicts arose, at which point it would take the form prefix.element. A dublin core element would then be added as:

<extends namespace="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-namespace/" prefix="dc" uses="*"/>

or 

<extends namespace="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-namespace/" prefix="dc"/>

Then
inline you could have the <creator> or <editor> element
being added into the mix. If there was a collision with an extant
namespace, then you'd default back to <dc.creator>. 


This
would be on top of the core arrangement discussed by Micah - in
essence, it does not penalize developers who DO need advanced
functionality simply because of the Granny Coder argument.