What should the resource of a namespace URL be?

[Rick Jelliffe]

The resource (if any) located by a namespace URL should be 
a string giving the preferred prefix for that namespace.

This takes the prefix out of the information set, but not out
of circulation.  It prevents what might be called "prefix
entropy" which would happen when there is repeated
cutting and pasting between different document types:
nice systems can rewrite the header with the preferred form.

For example, if I am cutting a section from a document
with defaulted namespaces, and pasting it into a
a document that uses a different namespace, an automated
system will have to generate some prefix, maybe a random 
string.  That would result in bad (for subsequent human 
editors) markup.

Rick Jelliffe


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