Re: [xml-dev] A question of necessity

[Arjun Ray <arjun.ray@verizon.net>]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016 15:43:08 +1000, Alexander Johannesen
<alexander.johannesen@gmail.com> wrote:

| So, you don't understand it, yet feel qualified to make a diagnosis? :)

Just applying Joe English's definition, that's all.  The terminology
is highly suggestive, yes, but not really diagnostic. :)

| > But I won't even try to guess the difference between sanity and insanity.
| 
| Why all this mental health stigma? :)

I'm sorry, you had said that you needed to keep your mixed content
models sane.  I guees I'd have to learn something about NUT, SMIC et
al to appreciate the point.
 
| > I need a stylesheet to parse?
| 
| No, but I do.

This is fascinating.  How and why would a parser need a stylesheet in
order to function?  Is this parser generally available?

| You might argue that most people don't need the complexities that 
| come with namespaces, and you might be right in that, but that 
| doesn't render it useless or even wrong.

Colonified names were an invention that took XML out of the SGML
pruning exercise it started as.  The issue was the necessity of this.

| How about we get rid of that default namespace can change? I reckon
| most hate would dissipate.

Failing to account for a default namespace is a very common gotcha.
Whether the default can change is neither here nor there, I think.

| Even in its current form there's useful notions, even if the
| complexity and sometimes gotchas are annoying. 

What useful notions can be distilled from the spec? That's quite
orthogonal to colonification of names.  

| I happen to like the mechanism for trying out different vocabularies 
| by simply changing the namespace identifier;

How is this different from changing the value of an attribute?
Somewhere in the processing is a switch based on the value of a
string, no?