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

[Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com>]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:49:39 +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
> It is well formed. (and parsed as such by any xml parser I've tried).

YAY!  Outbreak of sanity on xml-dev.  News at eleven.

> That's why they are reserved so that w3c can define specifications 
> using such names and existing software will parse them.

Yes.  This is also why pre-namespace validating XML parsers based on 
DTD do not treat names containing colon (which were "reserved" until 
namespaces in xml defined the meaning) as invalid (much less as 
ill-formed).

> It is much harder to introduce new syntax that makes previously non 
> wellformed xml well formed as that requires changing the installed 
> base.

Ah.  Very well stated.  Thank you, David.

It seems to me that "Reserved" and "Deprecated" have rather similar 
semantics, so far as that goes.  "Reserved" means: in the future, this 
may have well-defined semantics which don't mean what you hope it will 
mean.  Deprecated: you keep using that construction, but I do not think 
it means what you think it means.

Amy!
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
I know you don't want either to give or to take.  You've tried being
the giver, and you've found that the giver is always fooled.  And you
won't be the taker, because that's very difficult, and because you know
that the taker always ends by hating the giver.  You don't want ever
again to have to depend for happiness on another person.
                -- Lord Peter Wimsey