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RE: namespace reprise

• To: "Emmanuil Batsis \(Manos\)" <mbatsis@h...>,"Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@g...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: namespace reprise
• From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@g...>
• Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:54:34 +0200
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <3D637A1C.1040908@h...>

> From: Emmanuil Batsis (Manos) [mailto:mbatsis@h...]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 1:32 PM
> To: Julian Reschke; xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re:  namespace reprise
>
>
> Julian Reschke wrote:
>
> >>From: Emmanuil Batsis (Manos) [mailto:mbatsis@h...]
> >>
> >>Namespaces should point to schemas, being the actual vocabulary
> >>definition pointer. Even better, it should point to an an RDF document
> >>
> >>
> >
> >The benefit being...?
> >
>
> ..the ability to combine the formal purposes of XML names and a location
> for the vocabulary definition or other metadata source as a choice. Now
> I'm forced to distinguish between a vocabulary, and an identifier for it
> or other information about it etc.

Yes, and that's a good thing. There is no one-to-one relation between
namespaces and schemas.

> >>Secondly, a namespace URI designed *not* to actually point to something,
> >>should not be a URL or any other type of URI that uses a scheme designed
> >>to be used for resource retreival.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >What if I decide at a later pointer that my namespace URI now *should*
> >locate something?
> >
>
> Change your namespace URI to a URL. Do you think this presents a problem?

Yes. Because by doing that, you define a *new* vocabulary, and this change
will break processing of "old" documents.

> >>Attributes, the base of numerous debate around XML are also tortured by
> >>the XML names recommendation, meaning the default namespaces do not
> >>apply directly to attributes" part. I never managed to understand the
> >>reasoning behind this.
> >>
> >>Another thing that bothers me is the rough edges concerning APIs. Most
> >>APIs handle namespaces in a really stupid way. Even XPath in XSLT
> >>(which, IMHO is by far the best in it's anticipation of namespaces
> >>thanks to the according axis) is incapable of dynamically producing
> >>namespaces and one must know the default namespace to match the desired
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Well, that's by design. The default namespace is just a syntactic
> >abbreviation so that you don't need to use prefixes in your *input*
> >document.
> >
>
> Right. But since that default namespace is declared in the source
> document, it is accessible from your XSLT, so why isn't XSLT aware of it
> though a function or something (e.g. default-ns)? I would also like that
> to be dependent on context and the default namespace in scope, instead
> of limited to the default namespace for the root..

Why would you *want* to know the default namespace? What would you use this
information for?

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