Why namespaces?

[Paul Prescod]

Oren Ben-Kiki wrote:
> 
> There's so much churn going about distinguishing between three things:
> 
> 1. Unique naming - making sure that one can call "areElementsTheSame(name1,
> name2)".
> 2. Grammar/Syntax/Structure constraints - "isDocumentValid(rootElement,
> DTD)", "addDefaultsToDocument(rootElement, DTD)".
> 3. Semantics - doing whatever the application is for.
> 
> I would like to think that the intention was for namespaces to live
> exclusively in level 1 (call it "lex"), DTDs/Schemas in level 2 (call it
> "yacc"), and level 3 is the application itself. This is maybe simplistic but
> I found it to be a great help in figuring out my position on some of the
> issues raised in the relevant threads. 

This three level view is great. It also helps me to figure out my
position: but it is the opposite of yours.

Going back to lex and yacc: once you have the parse tree you don't care
what tokens you used to get there. The application should only look at
level 2. It is *level 1* that it should not care about.

Therefore I disagree with your next sentence:

> In the XHTML multi-namespace issue,
> for example, I'd rather the three XHTML variants were defined at level 2 -
> possible sets of constraints and defaults for a document, such that the
> application (say, the browser) should not in principle have to worry about
> which variant was used.

First, the browser doesn't care whether the differentiation was made at
level 1 or 2. Using your own model, it sees only level 2.

Second, note that an XHTML browser *does* need to worry about what
variant of HTML was used. The browser must decide which of its implicit
stylesheets to apply. Each stylesheet has hard-coded knowledge of
content models embedded within it. With HTML this is not a big deal
because we have become used to presuming that all HTML will be "loose". 

In general, as a model, we should adhere to your model strictly: the
browser should see only level 2. Level 2 validation should be driven by
the unique names in level 1.

It would be perfectly legal and useful to make an application that only
worked at the "lexical" level. But let's not pretend that that is the
norm. It is not. Most applications care about the overall "parse tree"
(content models etc.).

 Paul Prescod

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