Re: [xml-dev] HTML5 and almost no namespaces

[Michael Sokolov <sokolov@ifactory.com>]

On 6/2/2011 7:07 AM, Michael Kay wrote:
>
> But the objection to namespaces is not that there is no problem to be 
> solved, it is that namespaces (as currently defined) are a bad 
> solution to that problem; they introduce far too much complexity in 
> relation to the size of the problem. Far simpler solutions are 
> available to allow names to be disambiguated.

Yes and it sounds to me as if the HTML5 solution is to make the prefix 
part of the local name.  Is that right?  If so, it seems sensible to 
me.  Tying the prefix to a referenced namespace allows for longer 
namespaces, so less possibility of ambiguity, but how many namespaces do 
we really need?  Seems like short prefixes have pretty much allowed for 
enough (I think everyone recognizes many commonly-used prefixes although 
these are totally nonstandardized, just conventional).  Consider 
three-letter filename extensions.  There are collisions, but 
surprisingly few.  Actually if we hadn't been relying on url-like 
namespaces all this time, we would have much more standardization of 
prefixes, which would make documents far more intelligible to humans.

-Mike Sokolov
iFactory