[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Experimenting with Namespaces - DTDs?
Chris Smith writes: > But also as a developer, this seems to make this almost impossible to > even experiment with namespaces. As far as I can tell, DTDs are what > give you the ability to eXtend XML - without a comparable tool > involving namespaces, I can't specify what the eXtension is. The notes > suggest that changes to Namespaces are unlikely (not impossible, > just...). But changes to XML 1.0 also appear to be unlikely in the > near future. The only option available seems to be to ignore > Namespaces, since I can't find a way to use them that will give me any > benefits that XML hasn't already given me - unless I start to abandon > XML 1.0 in favour of a non-existent-non-standard XML 1.1 that has a > namespace aware DTD notation. There is another (somewhat unattractive) option: you can use your own schema notation internally, then export it as an XML 1.0 DTD for exchange. As Jon Bosak explained in his announcement, the namespace spec was brought out very quickly because other efforts like RDF had a dependency on it -- ideally, it would have waited six months or a year until there was time to deal with schemas, etc., but that wasn't possible. Personally, I'd recommend architectural forms over namespaces if you're concerned with DTDs, since architectural forms have several major advantages: 1. they work very well with XML 1.0 DTD syntax 2. they allow multiple inheritance 3. they allow you to hide the namespaces from the author (unless the author cares to poke around in #FIXED attribute values) 4. they are allowed to be declared in the external DTD subset 5. they are a more mature technology 6. they are part of an International Standard Namespaces may or may not become more useful in the future, depending on what the XML WG decides about schemas -- for now, they make a very awkward fit with XML 1.0 DTDs (they work, but as you say, they don't give you much). All the best, David -- David Megginson ak117@f... Microstar Software Ltd. dmeggins@m... http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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