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At 02:01 PM 28/12/00 +0000, Sean B. Palmer wrote: >I think some of the confusion was generated from the overall concept of >namespaces. Really it is too simple: and people expect something much more >complex. Most of the length of the namespace spec. is how to use namespaces >in XML, and says (*relatively*) very little about the purpose and intent of >namespaces. Once people get to grips that a namespace is a nmae is a name, >then we can decide what we want to *do* with the fact that our little bit >of XML has a unique name. Well said. I think a helpful question is "What can you do with little chunks of XML when they *don't* have names unique across the Net?" The answer is "Not much." Hence, namespaces, and if all they ever did was provide names, that'd be fine. It is however fine and I think useful to argue about what kinds of semantics are usefully associated with chunks of markup, whether namespace provide a useful grouping mechanism in this respect (I think most of us agree that they do), and what some good ways are to map from the namespace to the semantics. I don't believe that dereferencing the URI can be a complete solution, but I don't think ignoring the fact that the URI can be dereferenced is very smart either. -Tim
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