RE: Long Namespaces

There's some kind of law about natural language that says short words are
used more often than long words. Language has evolved that way because it
improves communication. When you have a concept that is very frequently
referenced, it's best to use a short name for it, because this reduces the
time taken by the reader to recognize it. So for a namespace like xsl or xs
which is used hundreds of times in a stylesheet, a short prefix works well.
It's likely that the saxon namespace will be used less often, so a slightly
longer name is appropriate.

I think a short prefix also helps the reader to focus their attention on the
local part of the name, which is the part that carries more information.

There's a school of thought, of course, which tries to ban short names like
"i" and "j" from programming entirely. This is of course a stupid
over-reaction to programs that over-use such names. The fact of the matter
is that bad programmers will produce unreadable code whatever disciplines
you impose on them.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Stubsjoen [mailto:kstubs@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 07 June 2007 18:58
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Long Namespaces
> 
> Is there any creed that suggests that namespace decelerations 
> are either bad or shunned upon?  It seems that 3 letter 
> namespaces are the norm.  Is anyone using verbose namespace 
> declarations regularly?
> 
> Karl..