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

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

On 22/09/2010 14:16, Pete Cordell wrote:
> Original Message From: "David Carlisle"
>> On 22/09/2010 13:13, Pete Cordell wrote:
>>> So xmlns:numberOfItems="3" is not legal.
>>
>> It's legal according to the namespace spec, but deprecated by a later
>> note. Relative URI references are allowed but deprecated, the result
>> of a long winded discussion some years after the namespace rec was
>> published as noted in (at least) the third edition of the namespace spec.
>
> Doesn't this depend what you call _the_ namespace spec? I would take
> _the_ namespace spec to be the latest one; i.e. 3rd edition. As you've
> stated above, this has the note about deprecation in it.

well lets go with that.


> Does the W3C  have a different idea?

some people wanted to make it illegal some people wanted to keep it 
being legal, they had a vote and the announced decision was that it was 
deprecated. My reading of that is that it is legal, but you shouldn't do 
it. Like <font>  in html which has been deprectaed in html for a decade 
or so so obviously no one uses that....

>
> The next thing to sort out is what the W3C's definition of 'deprecated'
> is. I would say it means that the above XML is legal for a legacy piece
> of XML (appealing to Namespaces 1st Ed), but illegal for an XML language
> defined after the publication of Namespaces 2nd Ed (Aug 2006).
>
No I don't think it means that. If that is the effect that was wanted 
(like the change to the Name production in the 5th edn of xml) the thing 
to do would not be to deprecate but just simply issue the new spec with 
the changed rule making it non valid. Then applications could cite 
conformance to the new spec of the old. Deprecation is a lot weaker than 
this, it just says don't do it, but it is still legal/wellformed. With 
more teeth is the policy that w3c specs (only) following that vote 
explicitly say that they don't associate any meaning to relative 
namespace uris.

David


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