Namespaces and URNs

[Dean Roddey]

I'm reposting this for Murry, who was having trouble posting today...

> "So if we are serious about making namespaces work we need to start using
> the same strings to refer to the same namespace. I agree that that means
> that DTD owners/maintainers need to be involved. Since most of the common
> DTDs are within the remit of the W3C, they should be thinking of how to
> identify them in namespaces. If they want to use FPIs, fine. But they
> should make it clear which the FPIs *are* and use them consistently. If
> they want to use URLs instead - fine. But they shouldn't encourage the use
> of both simultaneously."

Most of the common DTDs are not 'within the remit of the W3C'. In fact, only
two that I can discern (HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0) are. There are hundreds of
popular DTDs out there that are in use in academia, industry and government,
plus those defined by other standards bodies. Many have identifying FPIs.

Check Robin Cover's SGML/XML Web pages for more details.

http://www.sil.org/sgml/xml.html

> Ok, so I'm searching the 300,000 acronyms in my head and FPI is not popping up
> :-) Did I miss class that day? What does FPI stand for?

Formal Public Identifier. When I was still at Spyglass I wrote up a set of
SGML/HTML/etc. documentation that included info on FPIs. The "Spyglass

- Cambridge Research Center Technical Reference" is still there at

http://www.cm.spyglass.com/doc/

with the 'FPI RoadTrip' at

http://www.cm.spyglass.com/doc/fpi.html

I no longer have any connection with Spyglass, so any out of date links, etc.
please forward to them, not me.

Murray

[BTW, Dean, could you forward this to the XML-DEV list? Nobody at Sun can
apparently post to the list due to some weirdness. Thanks.]

----------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Software Weenie
IBM Center for Java Technology - Silicon Valley
roddey at us.ibm.com

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