RE: [xml-dev] Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (wasRe:[xml-dev] TAG on HLink)

On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 16:52, Didier PH Martin wrote:

> It seems that you have something in your mind here as a potential
> solution using schemas. 

No, not me :-)

This is an old issue and 2 years ago, people have been pondering if W3C
XML Schema could be a solution:

http://xmlhack.com/read.php?item=852
http://xmlhack.com/read.php?item=781

> Can you expand a bit your point of view. Eric,

My point was not to put this old story back to light though but rather
to take a step backward and ask again the (generic) question of what
needs to be defined in a document as opposed to what should be defined
outside the document in schemas, mapping table, applications or whatever
is needed to "understand" the document.

I think that namespaces are a step in the direction of making documents
more autonomous: when I am using XLink I can recognize (assuming that
there is a consensus on the namespace) that xlink:href is a link without
needing other resources.

Using schemas seems to be a step in the direction of making documents
more dependent since you need to read a schema to understand where the
links are.

> We need all the brainpower we can get to solve this issue and to provide
> a cure to our patient :-)

I am afraid my question is too generic to cure this one :-)

Cheers,

Eric
-- 
Rendez-vous à Paris.
                          http://www.technoforum.fr/integ2002/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
(W3C) XML Schema ISBN:0-596-00252-1 http://oreilly.com/catalog/xmlschema
------------------------------------------------------------------------