What is a namespace ... really?

[Tim Bray]

At 01:24 PM 1/15/99 -0500, Roger L. Costello wrote:
> It seems that people have
>differing ideas on what it is. I would like to try to summarize the points
>of view, and add my own two cents.
>
>(1) A namespace is just a URI.  It references some domain.  It is simply
>there to tell an application/processor what domain the associated XML
>elements hail from.

This is the "view" that is expressed by the actual namespace spec.  Other
views are simply incorrect.  There is not one word in the namespace spec
that suggests that namespace URIs represent DTDs, and in fact specific
language (look it up) that says that it's a non-goal that the URI
actually points at anything.

 -Tim

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