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1/26/2002 5:05:35 PM, Paul Prescod <paul@p...> wrote: > >What if the web works because it was designed properly and we stop >paying attention to the design? That's definitely something to think about carefully. My original point was more in reference to the argument that disallowing relative URIs in namespaces would somehow undermine the "Architecture of the Web." I haven't read Roy Fielding's work, but I doubt if it says much about XML namespaces, and I'm almost positive that no one with Fielding's clarity of vision is guiding the development of the XML family of specs. Let's examine the design principles of "The Web": http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html is worth reading frequently and memorizing the key points: Keep it Simple Design in Modularity Be Tolerant in What You Accept, Strict in What You Produce Decentralize Do One Thing Well Favor Simplicity Over Power I completely agree that everyone connected with the Web should be paying attention to these design principles as the design of the Web technologies evolves. BUT I'd suggest that the W3C itself has not, to put it mildly, insisted on these adherence to these principles in its recent output. The Web has a hard core -- HTTP and URIs definitely, (X)HTML and XML 1.0 to a very great extent, and all sorts of other things such as namespaces and schemas and xlink that fuzz out from there. I would question whether those peripheral parts of the web that do not obviously conform to its design principles should be considered to be "designed properly" until a lot more experience says so. Until that happens, I'm very leery of arguments along the lines of "I understand the design of The Web, and doing XYZ violates it." Newton, as I understand it, invented much of his mathematics to support his alchemical research ... The math stood the test of time, and the alchemy is clearly nonsense, even though Newton presumably thought they were integral parts of an overall "architecture."
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