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a general comment on namespace related terminology

• From: james anderson <james.anderson@a...>
• To: www-xml-schema-comments@w..., xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 03:04:44 +0200

Upon reading the "schema part 0 primer"
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-xmlschema-0-20001024/) for the first time, I
note that, as it is a primer, it might well take greater care with terminology
with respect to namespaces.

The first sentence of section three does take care to describe a correct
relation among schemas, names, types and element declarations:

  "A schema can be viewed as a collection (vocabulary) of type definitions and
element declarations whose names belong to a particular namespace called a
target namespace."

The remainder of the document, however, refers in several passages to
namespaces in relation to element declarations and types in such ways as to
imply that, in the context of a schema, a namespace can comprise elements and
types. There is no case to be made for succinct phrasing which would justify a
terminological flaw of this order.

There is a tendancy in the text to identify a schema with a namespace. The
passage on importing types does not, however, explain the problem sufficiently
to either motivate the distinct include/import mechanisms and or to clarify
the relation between a schema and a namespace.


I would ask that the authors reconsider the language used to describe what
are, in fact, three distinct spaces. Should my abstract description of the
problem not be clear, I would be happy to cite the passages where a more
careful phrasing would aid the presentation.

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