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RE: infinite depth to namespaces

• From: Leigh Dodds <ldodds@i...>
• To: "Fuchs, Matthew" <matthew.fuchs@c...>,"'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2001 10:34:05 +0100

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fuchs, Matthew [mailto:matthew.fuchs@c...]
> Sent: 31 August 2001 19:46
> To: 'Simon St.Laurent'
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE: infinite depth to namespaces

[...]

> 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.

There's an implication here that the 'concretization' of local elements was
an obvious and good step forward.

If it were then the best practice you suggest is probably the best
approach. But despite the massive amount of postings on this subject
I've still to see (or have I missed something along the way) a
strong justification for this new 'feature'. And others have argued that
there
are alternatives to local elements, using existing techniques.

Acknowledging the TIMTOWTDI / TSBOOWTDI divide, and that
this somewhat academic argument is unlikely to be resolved to
anyone's satisfaction, surely best practice is to avoid their
use. The justification being human factors, or the principle of
least surprise.

There seems to be no loss in functionality in this approach, and
I'd argue that this works _best_ with current software, of which
only a small portion is W3C Schema aware.

There's a quote about unnecessary multiplication of entities
which is pertinent.

L.


--
Leigh Dodds, Research Group, ingenta | "Pluralitas non est ponenda
http://weblogs.userland.com/eclectic |    sine necessitate"
http://www.xml.com/pub/xmldeviant    |     -- William of Ockham

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