• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: There is a meaning, but it's not in the data alone
• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 15:36:26 -0500
• In-reply-to: <200201292011.g0TKBgj07456@d...>
• Organization: Red Bridge Interactive, Inc.
• References: <E16Vb0C-000755-00@s...> <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E4306DF632E@HQ5> <200201292011.g0TKBgj07456@d...>

On Tuesday 29 January 2002 03:11 pm, you wrote:
> To my mind, alpha-renaming and XML namespaces are polar opposites.
> In the lambda-calculus, you can alpha-rename bound variables
> because the variable name is completely irrelevant; with XML
> namespaces, element and attribute names are deemed to be
> so important that they are made globally unique.
>
> The only similarity I can see is that both are used to
> avoid name clashes.  Is this what you have in mind?

<?gtn action="don flameproof vest"?>
I used "alpha-renaming" precisely because I think the tag and 
attribute names themselves to be irrelevant to the interpreter once 
they have been used for "binding"  to the processing logic. That's why 
I think namespaces, while useful for some things, don't deserve 
special status. 
<?gtn action="remove flameproof vest"?>

In a looser sense, "avoiding name clashes" is OK too (kind of like 
Emacs lisp, or JAVA package prefixes).

 

• References:
  • Re: There is a meaning, but it's not in the data alone
    • From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
  • RE: There is a meaning, but it's not in the data alone
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: There is a meaning, but it's not in the data alone
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

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