Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
Right. Which is why, if you're going to use local elements in a schema, you should make them unqualified, as that works best with existing software. See my response to Rick. This also shows that best practices need to evolve. While "put everything in a namespace" was reasonable best practice before the arrival of XSDL, the concretization of a notion of "local elements" (I hesitate to call it "formalization") - just as the Namespaces rec concretized the notion of "global attribute", which hadn't existed syntactically before, although people used them - can change what best practices can be. And best practices for local elements is unqualified. Matthew > -----Original Message----- > From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] > Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 11:22 AM > To: Fuchs, Matthew > Cc: xml-dev@l... > Subject: RE: infinite depth to namespaces > > > On 31 Aug 2001 10:40:14 -0700, Fuchs, Matthew wrote: > > Perhaps because there is often no single "best-practice" - > I think I'd > > expect you of all people to realize that. Often what is > most important is > > there be consistent practice - the principle of least > surprise, or something > > like that. Consistency is often more important than optimality. > > I think you must have a rather different understanding of "best > practices" from mine. My understand of "best practices" > isn't "optimal > way to do things" but rather "how best to avoid difficulties > within the > context of a given specification set". In that understanding, best > practice typically values consistency as much as (and frequently more > than) optimality. > > Common XML [1], for instance, is a best practices document focused on > consistency rather than making optimal use of XML 1.0's features. > > I had thought this usage of "best practices" was pretty ordinary in > computing (things like IETF Best Current Practice documents), > but maybe > it's rarer than I'd thought. > > I'd originally written: > > > Simple best-practice solutions are fairly easy to come up > with, but > > > seemingly just as easy to shoot down, suggesting that there > > > may never be > > > consensus on these issues. > > [1] - http://simonstl.com/articles/cxmlspec.txt > > Simon St.Laurent >
|
