What is a namespace ... really?

[Borden, Jonathan]

Whoooops, since the list server has been spitting this out so many times and
i've re-read this so many times I just realized that I made a misstatement
here...

That should read: "There are people who also believe that in the future the
namespace *uri* is to specify a Schema definition. ..."

The *concepts* of namespace and schema are different. The uri may in the
future provide a link (for example, in IE5b2). Under the IE5b2 mechanism,
there is a single schema for each namespace whose uri points to a schema
defn. Since a namespace is specified by its uri and a schema is presumably
located in a file (uri), this mechanism creates a 1-1 mapping.

When a more flexible mapping is desired, the uri need not point directly to
the schema uri, rather it could be a "urn:" (which puts off --but does not
prevent-- a solution to the problem :-)

Jonathan Borden
http://jabr.ne.mediaone.net

>
>
> Borden, Jonathan writes:
>
>  > This is the *current* state of affairs. There are people who also
>  > believe that in the future the namespace concept is to be extended
>  > to incorporate Schema definition. That is, when a namespace URN
>  > points to a Schema definition, the Schema may, can or will be
>  > enforced in the same way that a DTD is enforced by a validating
>  > parser and a <!DOCTYPE definition.
>
> Ack! No!  Please don't hardcode a one-to-one relationship between
> schemas and namespaces.
>
> A single schema could define structures using elements and attributes
> from more than one namespace, and elements and attributes from a
> single namespace can be used and structured in many different ways.
>

>
>


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