Namespaces and validation

[Peter Jones]

You'll have to excuse my inexperience with things XML (I've only been at
this a few weeks) but...

When I mailed the list earlier questioning the presence of a qualified
name in the <!DOCTYPE decl of the namespaces spec my concerns were with
the issue of validation.
It seems obvious to me that in order to preserve the general utility of
a DTD for various differing implementations that a DTD should not
contain anything anywhere near as specific as a qualified name. 
Qualified names are created with the use of namespace attributes for
elements. I think in principle the use of namespaces in document
instances is a good idea, as it prevents name collisions in compound
documents. O.k. so far, so banal.
But why don't the namespaces for an element simply give the URI of the
DTD where the element is defined for validation purposes? One document
instance, many bits of DTDs. DTDs are then recycleable.
The best way to achieve this is to remove the DOCTYPE decl from the DTD
and simply have the various elements in the document instance refer to
their respective definitions in DTDs. These namespace attributes can
then be used for validation or ignored as required.

Any thoughts folks?

Peter Jones
WebDev Technical Editor
Wrox Press
mailto:peterj at wrox.com
***************
Wrox Press UK Ltd.
http://www.wrox.co.uk
Tel 44 121 706 6826
Fax 44 121 706 2967





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