The Peace Process: DOM and namespaces...

[Tyler Baker]

Don Park wrote:

> Andrew,
>
> >Don Park suggests that we could "establish a business practice requiring
> all
> >URI used as namespace name to
> >not contain any illegal XML name characters."  That rules out "/", thereby
> >limiting namespaces to second-tier domain names and similar unsegmented
> >names. That goes against the desire for unlimited scalability and the goal
> >to allow _anyone_ to create namespace names as they need to.
>
> I guess what I am proposing is a creation of a new URI scheme for XML
> Namespace that is more friendly to namespace-ignorant applications.  The URI
> production rules are defined as:
>
> uri ::= scheme : path [ ? search ]
>
> We can use 'xmlns' as the URI scheme name, outlaw the optional search
> segment, and then use Java package naming scheme for the path.  Here is an
> example:
>
> <dh:foo xmlns:dh="xmlns:com.docuverse.dom.html." dh:bar="foobar"/>
>
> which expands to:
>
> <xmlns:com.docuverse.dom.html.foo
> xmlns:com.docuverse.dom.html.bar="foobar"/>

I like this idea except that your chances of the W3C adopting it are likely slim and none, so
is any idea of splitting XML 1.0 and "Namespaces in XML" into two different types of documents
so that applications are free to choose which method they want to use in their applications
without having to worry about handling the ambiguities that arise from combining XML 1.0 data
and "Namespaces in XML" data together all at once.  A clean break between the two
specifications I think would be good for XML.  It would end the namespaces issue as people who
want and need to use "Namespaces in XML" will use "Namespaces in XML" and those who don't want
to be bogged down with the complexities of "Namespaces in XML" or would prefer to use a
different method of managing unique names could choose to do so.  I just feel like some people
have the attitude that I will be using "Namespaces in XML" whether I like it or not.  Please,
lets formally split these two obviously different document formats for the good of XML and end
this namespaces issue right now.

Tyler


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