• From: DavePawson <davep@d...>
• To: Liam Quin <liam@w...>
• Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:47:28 +0000

Liam Quin wrote:
> I've been thinking for a while about this proposal.

> The main benefits you get are
> (1) your XML documents are simpler and smaller
> (2) it's easier to remember the xin file than a mass of URIs
> (3) you dereference xin files and cache them -- they are not names --
>     so whether there is a trailing slash or not, whether there's a #
>     at the end, whether characters are escaped or not, makes no
>     difference, an architectural improvement.
> 
> The main downside is that it [expletive deleted], but maybe it [expletive deleted] less than
> the status quo (and in any case [expletive deleted] isn't always bad...)

Far less than a bad copy/paste n times?

> 
> A secondary downside is that when you rely on something not
> ubiquitous, you risk losing some interoperability.
> 
> My question is, is anyone interested and does it sound useful?

Yes, yes.


Are there lessons to be learned from a catalog file as is
suggested elsewhere in this thread?

A number of external 'xin' files would be far easier to remember.



It would impact quite a few specs though, and create a bit
of W3C flack!





regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

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