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Re: Looking for an example of a name colliision

• To: Bill de hÓra <bill@d...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Looking for an example of a name colliision
• From: "Bob Foster" <bob@o...>
• Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 17:56:14 -0500
• References: <ab7bdvs3gol4j4trlefsiq6g4bfbaou70f@4...> <3ED5B096.9080102@t...> <3ED6062E.4080403@b...> <014f01c326ba$5d609890$b6f5d3ce@L565> <3ED860C6.5060207@d...>

From: "Bill de hÓra" <bill@d...>
> Does anyone have an example of a collision that can only be solved,
> or even best be solved with XML Namespaces? A neccessary condition
> is ideal, but examples where namespace represents an optimal design
> decision will do. I'm asking for two reasons:
>
>   - in my work with XML I've never run across a collision problem
> that seemed to require namespaces. I wondering whether they're rare
> or whether the markup I dela with is unusual.
>
>   - I'm looking for markup that I can use for test cases and
> thinking about the matter.
>
> I went looking in the Namepsaces spec and found this example and an
> assertion:
>
> [[[
> <section><title>Book-Signing Event</title>
> <signing>
>    <author title="Mr" name="Vikram Seth" />
>    <book title="A Suitable Boy" price="$22.95" /></signing>
> <signing>
>    <author title="Dr" name="Oliver Sacks" />
>    <book title="The Island of the Color-Blind" price="$12.95"
> /></signing>
> </section>
>
> In this example, there are three occurrences of the name title
> within markup, and the name alone clearly provides insufficient
> information to allow correct processing by a software module
> ]]]
>
> It demonstrates no such thing to me. For example, here is the
> sufficient information:
>
>   /section/title
>   /section/signing/author@title
>   /section/signing/book@title
>
> I suspect this particular assertion about the insufficiency of
> traditional namespaces in the spec is false. I believe for it to be
> true, there would need to exist markup for which no keys could be
> computed to dilineate one element or attribute from another.

You surely don't mean that no homonyms can exist that cannot be resolved by
XPath? E.g.,

<author title="Contracts" title="Professor" title="13">James Vleek</author>

where the first is the title of a paper, the second the title of the author
and the third Title 13 of the US Code.

Name collisions can easily arise in this way, where attributes are used as
domain-specific annotations, like "foreign attributes" are used in XML
Schema and RELAX NG. An annotator in one domain cannot reasonably be
expected to avoid collisions with all other possible domains, even though
they are all marking up the same elements.

Bob

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.  |  http://www.xmlbuddy.com
- Goethe

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Looking for an example of a name colliision
    • From: "Chiusano Joseph" <chiusano_joseph@b...>

• References:
  • Vocabulary Combination
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
  • Re: Vocabulary Combination
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Vocabulary Combination and optional namespaces
    • From: Joe Gregorio <joe@b...>
  • Re: Vocabulary Combination and optional namespaces
    • From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
  • Looking for an example of a name colliision
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill@d...>

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