Re: [xml-dev] To namespace or not to Namespace ....

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 13:15 -0400, David wrote:
> [...]

>  For example all the schemas have a concept of 
> linking, a concept of paragraphs etc ... while the majority of the 
> structure is domain specific, it would be nice to share the common parts.
> Which all roads leads to ....
> 
> Namespaces !!!!

In the SGML world it generally led to a shared element pool, as Eve
Maler liked (likes?) to call it.

Once you make authors deal with
    <spec1:section>
      <common:title>..</common:title>
      <spec2:topic>
        <common:purpose>
          <common:paragraph>
          <spec2:step>
           <spec9:part-number>...
they will hate you and make you wear shoes for the rest of your life.

But you are right, it's technically possible. In many programming
languages, namespaces would let you say,

    import common;
    import section from spec1;
    import topic, step from spec2;
    import part-number from spec9;

and then use unqualified names. That sort of functionality can be a
great help, but it is not what XML namespaces do today.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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