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Re: When to design an attribute in a namespace?

• To: <kynn@p...>
• Subject: Re: When to design an attribute in a namespace?
• From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:22:37 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <200404211251.i3LCpwf10127@p...>
• References: <200404211251.i3LCpwf10127@p...>

On Apr 21, 2004, at 8:51 AM, <kynn@p...> wrote:
>
>
> But I am interested in learning to recognize those rare situations
> in which, as a designer, one *should* put a particular attribute
> in a namespace.  This is still very unclear to me.  What are the
> requirements that an attribute must fulfill to be a good candidate
> for being placed in a namespace by the schema/DTD designer?
>
Generally if the use of the attribute is always taken in context of its 
parent element then the attribute need not be namespace qualified. On 
the other hand, if attributes are intended to have meaning regardless 
of which element it is attached to, the attribute ought be namespace 
qualified.

For example, XLink attributes can be defined on potentially any element 
-- these are namespace qualified, and define a link regardless of the 
name of the element.

Another example is RELAXNG

<rng:element name="foo" > ...

In this case there is no need to namespace qualify the "name" attribute 
as its meaning is determined by the rng:element.

That's how I see it.

Jonathan

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    • From: <kynn@p...>

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