SAX: ModSAX addition, general property query

[David Megginson]

Tom Harding writes:
 > David Megginson wrote:
 > 
 > > As I wrote before, it doesn't much matter whether we use Java property
 > > names incorporating domain names (like
 > > 'org.xml.sax.features.validation') or URIs (like
 > > 'http://xml.org/sax/features/validation'), as long as we have the
 > > ability for people to create new names without fear of collision.
 > 
 > I would also urge against using an http: URI since it is not meant
 > that a resource actually be retrieved using the http protocol.

I've been thinking about this issue, and I'm fairly convinced that the 
URI is the right choice.

Think of the URI a statement of ownership.  Assume that my ISP is
host.net, and that I've been allocated 5MB of web space at
http://host.net/foo/.

I am the only one who has the right to make a resource available at
http://host.net/foo/, so I am the one who has the (moral) right to
construct feature IDs based on http://host.net/foo/.  It is not
sufficient simply to use the domain name "host.net", because I don't
own the domain (someone else could construct the same feature ID), and
it is not sufficient to use something starting with net.host.foo,
because I *don't* have the right to make something available at, say,
ftp://host.net/foo/ -- host.net has made the foo available to me only
through the HTTP protocol.  Perhaps Foo enterprises has a download
directory at ftp://host.net/foo/, and they might want to construct
their own property ID based on it.

Namespaces seems to have got it right.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)