• From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>
• To: Liam Quin <liam@w...>
• Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:03:16 +1100

Liam Quin wrote:
>  
> Imagine having an XML vocabulary (or some other mechanism)
> that says, in this context, the following elements are in
> the following namespace, and in this other context, the following
> elements and attributes are in this other namespace, and so on.
>   
There is in fact already a technology that can do this.

ISO/IEC 19757-8:2008   Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) — 
Part 8: Document schema renaming language – DSRL 
<http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c052348_ISO_IEC_19757-2_2008%28E%29.zip>

This allows you to have, for example, something like

<dsrl:element-map>
   <dsrl:from>picture</dsrl:from>
   <dsrl:to xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/...">svg:picture</dsrl:to>
   ...
<dsrl:element-map>

DSRL also provides a <dsrl:within> element to provide some 
disambiguation. You can also remap attribute names, PI targets, and 
enumerated values, so it is potentially useful for some kinds of schema 
maintenance too.

The 2007 FCD is available at http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0894.pdf
I have raised a question about when the standard text is being published 
to the free ISO site with the other parts of ISO DSDL.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

• References:
  • XIN: XML implicit namespace definitions
    • From: Liam Quin <liam@w...>