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> -----Original Message----- > From: Don Park [mailto:donpark@d...] > Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 1:37 PM > > I started with the question: "Why isn't there namespaces > in normal languages like English?" A boring and divergent > question. Who told you English was normal? Of course natural languages have namespaces: they're innumerable and flexible, and also form the ground of articulation, not the surface, and we get to decide which to use when, both sending and receiving. If you're really good, you can play on the available field of namespaces to create things like jokes and irony. Think "semiotic field". > I moved on to more interesting question: "What if English > language used namespaces?" There are several ways to > interpret this question but the most interesting is this: > "What is the social impact of using namespaces in English > or any other spoken/written language?" > > My answer was: massive fragmentation of society. > Who told you society wasn't massively fragmented? Explicit namespacing (aside from being impossible) would only render the illusion of communication even more untenable than it already is. I believe logicians call this the problem of indexicals: in "this [expletive deleted]!", how do you know what "this" references? Very important in determining the attitude of the speaker. > I have a feeling that the answer to above question is > important to understanding the impact of namespaces in XML. > > Here are some of the side questions I asked myself: > > Is it really a 'good thing' to have namespaces in XML? What Do you mean "a means of scoping names, so that a local, apparently atomic name can be mapped to a universal name"? Yes. Or do you mean "namespaces as designed in the current rec"? Dunno. > ill effect will it have on XML's future? Why can't the > semantic of '<name>' be determined purely by context? What Efficiency rears its ugly head. If you could derive the semantics from the context, then you could just tell the computer what to do, in English. > is wrong with using just <html> to distinguish HTML's use of > 'a' tag? Is the ability to inject attributes from other > namespaces really useful? What is the possitive effect of > having just one namespace? Well, it makes life easier for language designers and implementers. Makes life really hard for everybody else. > Why can't we have central > registry of XML names? Who's gonna run it? Networking Solutions? What happens when somebody sets up a competing registry? Who's going to settle disputes over the semantics of FOO? -gregg 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 unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe 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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