[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Namespace URI address resources
From: Ronald Bourret <rbourret@i...> >Murray Maloney wrote: > >> OK, so we disagree. > >Actually, quite a few people disagree with using the namespace URI to >retrieve the schema, as recent discussions have shown. Unfortunately, >although we've assembled a mass of discomfort, none of us has come up with >what I would consider an absolute killer technical argument -- that is, one >that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work. I don't think "it won't work" is a good enough criterion. There are many things that work that have undesirable ramifications: <BLINK> works. Of course namespace URLs can point to anything: namespaces do not use the resource. But forcing the namespace URL point to a schema has bad side effects. This is what my online article "How to Promote Organic Plurality on the WWW" is about. See http://www.ascc.net/xml/en/utf-8/monolith.html My argument is that the WWW has succeeded because it (networking, TCP/IP, HTTP/MIME) is based on allowing plurality and organic development (i.e., market forces in a non-monetary market). It is not enough to have layers, there also needs to be a mechanism preceding each layer to allow alternatives. This view is supports Tim's argument. It is OK if some namespace URLs point to schemas. But it is not OK for any system to take over the namespace declaration and make it serve as a schema declaration. The namespace declarations should mean what the spec says and nothing more. Dave Brownell's post was good on this. Murray is not saying "Why can't the URL resource be a schema?" but "Why cannot we overload the namespace declaration to be the XML schema declaration?". * The first reason is because we need to support plurality, so any overloading should allow a multuplicity of content-negotiated schemas not just XML Schemas; * the second reason is because such overloading should be at best considered a defaulting mechanism in the absense of a specific schema declaration, and there is as yet no specific declaration mechanism for schemas; * the third reason is because it you then need markup to say "the namespace mechanism is overloaded" which then in effect makes namespaces not universal names but names-in-a-particular-schema-in-a-particular-schema-language; * the fourth reason is given in the note mentioned: it goes against the way other parts of the WWW have been designed and works against the public interest: it allows "data kidnap" and "workflow kidnap". Rick Jelliffe Rick Jelliffe 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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 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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