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Re: Vocabulary Combination and optional namespaces

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Vocabulary Combination and optional namespaces
• From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
• Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 06:38:05 +0100

 >Anybody who is so namespace allergic that they cannot add a single 
"xmlns" attribute to
 >their document is, in my opinion, trying to make life difficult for 
others, not trying to
 >make life easy for themselves.

I tried that tack for a while but found that you still get into *awful* 
messes downstream when
writing processing code. Reason being that so many tools from SAX APIs to 
editors to XPath
processors fall over themselves to "help" you expand your namespaces 
creating a royal P.I.T.A.

Namespaces cause more problems than they fix. This has been my experience, 
and the experience
of the 20 odd XML developers who work for Propylon over the last couple of 
years. Perhaps our
experience is unusual but I doubt it. More often than not, when you go into 
new client engagements to
sort out XML problems, we find XML transwrecks in the hallways.

Earlier somebody compared namespaces to condoms - they provide extra 
protection. On the
contrary, I would suggest that namespaces are an STD that should be 
assiduously avoided.

Oh, there is one way to stay sane and still use namespaces. Get all your 
tools from end to end from
a single vendor. So much for interop.

No thanks.

Sean


http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com

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