[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XLink a special case in the self-describing Web?
[Eve Maler:] > XLink the namespace is just a set of attributes; this is just as much > a legitimate namespace as any other. The "sleight of hand" comes > in the form of the XLink-as-application semantics, which is really > separate from XLink-the-namespace. I think Eve has put her finger on exactly what is bothering me. XLink-the-namespace and XLink-the-application-semantics are, for me, mutually inextricable. I don't see any utility in either one, in the absence of the other. What am I missing, here? Most readers of xml-dev seem to have no trouble with the idea that XML Namespace names used as element type names and attribute names have value that is independent of what the names mean. So far, I haven't detected any such value. It seems to me that XML Namespaces are an attempt to leverage the existing investment in the management of the namespace of domain names, so that there can be lots and lots of guaranteed-unique names, available to everyone for every purpose. But I don't see that XML Namespaces even accomplishes that modest goal, in fact. The namespace of domain names is not a firm foundation for such a scheme. People trade domain names all the time; many domain names will not mean the same things in the year 2002 that they mean in 2000, which for me, anyway, calls into question the meaning of documents that reference namespaces that depend on those domain names. Even if the only semantic of a domain name is that it forms a prefix for the name of a namespace, the reliability of that semantic is compromised by the economic reality that domain names change owners, meanings, and purposes. (It would work quite well if a namespace declaration referred, in addition to the domain name itself, to a dated version of the document (!) that constitutes the table of all extant domain names and their owners, and if the database of all domain names and their owners at any point in time could be queried in much the same rapid, universal way that is today used to resolve domain names to IP addresses.) Again, it's just my neurosis, if you like, that names have to be meaningful in order to be useful. All these XML Namespace names seem to me about as useful as leaves blowing in the wind. Information that I create today, using XML Namespaces, is far too subject to loss of value, because of the high probability that the leaves will blow away. I don't choose to invest my own life in the creation of information that will not have the power to last. I can't recommend such practices to my customers, either, regardless of the popularity of XML Namespaces. Ars longa, vita brevis, etc. -Steve -- Steven R. Newcomb, President, TechnoTeacher, Inc. srn@t... http://www.techno.com ftp.techno.com NEW ADDRESS effective May 1, 2000: voice: +1 972 359 8160 fax +1 972 359 0270 405 Flagler Court Allen Texas 75013-2821 USA *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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