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Re: Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (was Re: [xml-d

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• Subject: Re: Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (was Re: TAG on HLink)
• From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
• Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 15:38:12 +0000
• In-reply-to: <YXRP611UKG98TRHLKB6KH83UR31WDC.3d945bcf@MChamp>
• References: <n2f8pu4b3gj1tse81sv27vn1m8funkqp0g@4...> <YXRP611UKG98TRHLKB6KH83UR31WDC.3d945bcf@MChamp>

Mike Champion <mc@x...> wrote:

| Other specs that appear on the surface to depend heavily on colonified 
| namespaces?   How much baby would have to be thrown out with the XML 
| Namespaces 1.0 bathwater, assuming that such a thing made sense? 

A lot of baby, in the way of intellectual investment.  This takes many
forms, the two principal ones being (1) what suddenly become "legacy data"
and (2) what suddenly become "legacy systems".  Colon-encrusted documents,
and software spinning its wheels while the world retools.  Do you want to
be Left Behind?  Better by far to define the Leading Edge as the pointed
instrument in your back (as opposed to your throat.)  

The Fear Of Having Been Proved Wrong.  It's baby, not bathwater, for
reasons not necessarily restricted to reputation and/or unvested options.

| Or maybe XSLT *does* illustrate a good special case in which the colons 
| ("sanely" applied, in Joe English's sense, of course) make sense.

They don't make sense, but within limits and with workarounds they "work".
The basic reason is that the "XSLT namespace" is not some ineffably cosmic
immanent profundity but a simple matter of RTFM.

| Or maybe there are a *small* number of prefixes that just need to be 
| universally recognized to ease the job of infrastructure specs, but name 
| mapping is a better approach for merging application vocabularies.  

Which would lead to insistent demands that more and more fall under the
rubric of "infrastructure".  No bastille goes unstormed.

| I don't have many preconceptions about what will really work, I just 
| don't want promising ideas to languish just because the W3C stamped
| "Recommendation" on the alternative. 

Finally, some real heresy! ;-)

(The way it was supposed to go, "namespaces" would have been defined as
the *only* "promising idea".  Everything else was so 1980s.)

| The XHTML/XLink debate (not to mention the URI debate, the RDF/TM debate, 
| the RPC/REST debate ...) makes it clear that these things don't go away 
| just because the W3C has spoken. 

I don't think the W3C expected the XHTML folks to have the courage of
their convictions.  It's a start.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (was Re: TAG on HLink)
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

• References:
  • Re: TAG on HLink
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
  • Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping (was Re: TAG onHLink)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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