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[Tim Bray:] > Namespaces are a facility to make names universal, no more, no less. They don't accomplish that goal. Now that we've done away with the requirement that there be a DTD, surprise! we still need models. Namespaces, however, are not models, and the actual model that you must know, in order to be able to write software to work with a namespace, doesn't have to be published in order to be used. So, now we have a situation in which software vendors can benefit from the sheer secrecy of their information architectures. This is progress? I don't think so. In terms of the public interest, this is a huge step backwards. This is precisely the opposite outcome from the reason why I have devoted 14 years of my life to generalized markup. > Making the names that populate that markup universal, so that > vocabularies can freely be mixed, simply adds robustness to the > system in the face of the fact that the days of the Great > Centralized Committee-Built DTD In The Sky are over (good > riddance). -Tim If vocabularies can be *freely* mixed, then they have no internal structuring requirements in order to make sense. Any name can appear anywhere at all, including inside elements from the same namespace where they don't make sense according to the (unpublished and, at this point in time, unpublishable) requirements of that namespace. So now we have a situation in which there is no basis for syntactic validation. The whole business of what constitutes syntactic validity can be a secret between those who met to make a Great Centralized Committee-Built DTD In The Sky (but instead of calling it a DTD, it's called a "namespace" -- something that has no formal existence). This is not progress, and it's not robustness, either. In terms of the public interest, this is a huge step backwards. -Steve -- Steven R. Newcomb, President, TechnoTeacher, Inc. srn@t... http://www.techno.com ftp.techno.com voice: +1 972 231 4098 fax +1 972 994 0087 pager (150 characters max): srn-page@t... 3615 Tanner Lane Richardson, Texas 75082-2618 USA xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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