RE: [xml-dev] My report on experiments with unused namespaces

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

David Carlisle wrote:

> comments, processing instructions, white space. other 
> character data may also carry information.

Agreed. They are a concern as well. Fortunately they are easily identified. 

The difficulty of precisely defining "used" and "unused" namespaces has been a shocker to me.

> DTD can be used to invalidate unwanted namespace declarations.

Ah! What a novel idea. I believe you are right David. I will ponder the implications of this.

/Roger


-----Original Message-----
From: David Carlisle [mailto:davidc@nag.co.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 5:12 AM
To: Costello, Roger L.
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] My report on experiments with unused namespaces

On 22/09/2010 09:58, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> This is a significant concern for me and others.
>
> Eliminating unused namespaces reduces concern.


It's only a concern if you choose to be concerned about it. As all 
commenters have noted, there is no definition of "unused". Any markup in 
the document may be used by someone. If you choose to class certain 
constructs as undesirable that's your choice, but why pick on 
namespaces. comments, processing instructions, white space. other 
character data may also carry information. If you don't like the 
facilities offered by XSD, then there are other options, eg DTD can be 
used to invalidate unwanted namespace declarations.


David


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