[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 06:54:29 -0400
• In-reply-to: <JIEGINCHMLABHJBIGKBCIEGIEMAA.julian.reschke@g...>
• References: <JIEGINCHMLABHJBIGKBCIEGIEMAA.julian.reschke@g...>

At 10:00 AM +0200 6/17/02, Julian Reschke wrote:

>Well, in this case we should care. I know of at least one XML application
>that *does* validate namespace names (Jim Clark's JING).
>

And I can add another. JDOM at least tries to do this, though 
currently that code is broken. And I'm working on a third myself, 
which is why I bumped across this.

I agree that URI conformance should be a requirement. I think it 
could probably be made so in Namespaces 1.1 without any great effort. 
The simplest way would be to add a namespace constraint specifying 
that the value of a namespace declaration attribute must be a legal 
RFC 2396 URI reference.

The question for me is whether this is a small enough and obvious 
enough change that it could plausibly be made an erratum to 1.0. A 
little to my surprise, Dare pointed out one major public case 
(WebDAV) where the actual namespace name was in fact not a URI 
reference.

Julian Reschke pointed out that there was a different loophole WebDAV 
could use, based on a future version of RFC 2396. Of course, the 
namespaces spec references 2396 only, not 2396 and its successors. :-(

Not that the namespaces errata are models of backwards compatibility 
and small changes, but I do prefer to be very conservative in what's 
classified as an erratum. I feel this change is just a little too big 
to be justified as an erratum. I think it needs to wait for 
Namespaces 1.1.

-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|             http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

• References:
  • RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
    • From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@g...>

• Prev by Date: RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
• Next by Date: Namespaces and DTDs - Why not use what we have?
• Previous by thread: RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
• Next by thread: RE: Illegal Characters in Namespace URIs
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread