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Re: When to design an attribute in a namespace?

• To: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>
• Subject: Re: When to design an attribute in a namespace?
• From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 12:16:29 +1000
• Cc: kynn@p..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <B507E500-94C4-11D8-886B-000A95BA5A2C@o...>
• Organization: Zenucom Pty Limited
• References: <200404211251.i3LCpwf10127@p...> <B507E500-94C4-11D8-886B-000A95BA5A2C@o...>
• Reply-to: rjm@z...

there's a lot of personal preference here.

i use attributes when they characterise the tag, end elements when they
are contents of the tag.

e.g.

<table name="x">
	<record>...</record>
	</table>

it's a long perma thread, and this probably only reflects the way my
mind works.

rick

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 11:22, Jonathan Borden wrote:
> 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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• References:
  • When to design an attribute in a namespace?
    • From: <kynn@p...>
  • Re: When to design an attribute in a namespace?
    • From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>

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