Naming conventions for a sampling of W3C and ISO XML vocabularies

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

Hi Folks,

I am sampling some standard XML vocabularies to see what naming convention they use. Below is what I've compiled thus far. What naming convention do you use?

1. XML Schema: all elements and attributes are camel case. Examples: maxOccurs, elementFormDefault, substitutionGroup.

2. XSLT: all elements and attributes are lower-case, dash-separated. Examples: apply-templates, exclude-result-prefixes, analyze-string.

3. Schematron: most elements and attributes are a single, lower-case word (e.g., assert, rule, pattern). There is an element and an attribute with multiple words (value-of, is-a). There are two elements that use camel case (queryBinding and defaultPhase).

Notice that Schematron isn't consistent in its naming convention. Is that a bad thing? Is it a good thing to have a consistent naming convention?

Why does XML Schema and XSLT have different naming conventions? They are both W3C technologies. Does the W3C not have a policy on naming markup?

/Roger