Just require URLs

[David Megginson]

Hunter, David writes:

 >So why not have the namespace URL link to that DTD/Schema by
 >convention?  It would only be a convention, of course, it wouldn't
 >really be worthwhile to try and enforce that, or to force all XML
 >formats to have a DTD or Schema, but I'm sure it would be handy, and
 >it would eliminate the problem of deciding which language to use for
 >your documentation.

Member-confidentiality rules do not allow me to refer to the arguments 
of other members of the now-defunct XML WG, but this topic did come up 
(at length).  My own argument was as follows:

1. there will not always be a 1:1 relationship between Namespaces and
   schemas (my schema, for example, might reuse the semantics but not
   the structure of elements from the HTML namespace); and

2. there will not always be a 1:1 relationship between documents and
   schemas (you may apply various sorts of schemas to the same
   document, say, one for structure (as in XML Schema), one for
   semantics (as in RDF schemas), and another for company-specific
   business rules.

Or, to put it in graphical terms (turn on your fixed-width fonts):

  +--------+                 +---------+
  |Document|*---------------*|Namespace|
  +--------+                 +---------+
       *                          *
       |         +------+         |
       +--------*|Schema|*--------+
                 +------+


All the best,


David

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

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