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RE: infinite depth to namespaces

• From: "Fuchs, Matthew" <matthew.fuchs@c...>
• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 11:46:20 -0700

Right.  Which is why, if you're going to use local elements in a schema, you
should make them unqualified, as that works best with existing software.
See my response to Rick.

This also shows that best practices need to evolve.  While "put everything
in a namespace" was reasonable best practice before the arrival of XSDL, the
concretization of a notion of "local elements" (I hesitate to call it
"formalization") - just as the Namespaces rec concretized the notion of
"global attribute", which hadn't existed syntactically before, although
people used them - can change what best practices can be.  And best
practices for local elements is unqualified.

Matthew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]
> Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 11:22 AM
> To: Fuchs, Matthew
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE: infinite depth to namespaces
> 
> 
> On 31 Aug 2001 10:40:14 -0700, Fuchs, Matthew wrote:
> > Perhaps because there is often no single "best-practice" - 
> I think I'd
> > expect you of all people to realize that.  Often what is 
> most important is
> > there be consistent practice - the principle of least 
> surprise, or something
> > like that.  Consistency is often more important than optimality.
> 
> I think you must have a rather different understanding of "best
> practices" from mine.  My understand of "best practices" 
> isn't "optimal
> way to do things" but rather "how best to avoid difficulties 
> within the
> context of a given specification set".  In that understanding, best
> practice typically values consistency as much as (and frequently more
> than) optimality.
> 
> Common XML [1], for instance, is a best practices document focused on
> consistency rather than making optimal use of XML 1.0's features.
> 
> I had thought this usage of "best practices" was pretty ordinary in
> computing (things like IETF Best Current Practice documents), 
> but maybe
> it's rarer than I'd thought.
> 
> I'd originally written:
> > > Simple best-practice solutions are fairly easy to come up 
> with, but
> > > seemingly just as easy to shoot down, suggesting that there 
> > > may never be
> > > consensus on these issues.
> 
> [1] - http://simonstl.com/articles/cxmlspec.txt
> 
> Simon St.Laurent
> 

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