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Re: Namespace Basic Principles

• From: Ken MacLeod <ken@b...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 10:09:02 -0600

"Sean B. Palmer" <sean@m...> writes:

> Simple question:-
> 
> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" />
> 
> It has often been siad that the most useful characteristic of having
> a unique name for XML is simply that it is therfore unique.  The
> above example is an XHTML div element. But how do we know it is
> XHTML?

> For the record: I think that an HTML processor could jsut
> "recognize" the xmlns. An XML processor would just say "well, it's
> unique", and an SW engine would try to dereference it.

Right.  At this stage, since there is no (general) spec that ties a NS
to any other semantic information, the attachment of semantic
information is done "out of band".

Every XML application I've seen or written that uses namespaces to
derive semantics has a copy of the namespace URI so that when it sees
that URI in an instance it can go, "ah, I know what that is".


I think the meat of this whole debate surrounds "where is the spec
that ties a NS to other semantic information", and then only
collaterally what issues would be involved in doing so.

  -- Ken

• References:
  • Namespace Basic Principles
    • From: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@m...>

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