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Article:
XML Namespaces Don't Need URIs
Subject: Namespace prefix registry
Date: 2005-04-15 06:08:15
From: bryan rasmussen
Response to: Namespace prefix registry
I'm not sure what you mean by this, if you mean that prefixes should have a hardcoded association then obviously you could not maintain that for every namespace, so you would just want to do it for the important namespaces (I suppose that is a reasonable way of defining these namespaces you refer to in the article) some problems arise


1. parsers must now support a list of prefixes that don't need to have a namespace associated with them. how does one make sure that parsers maintain the same list
2. people will be fighting to get their namespace on the list of important namespaces
3. one of the problems with namespaces is that they confuse newbies, the idea of having pre-established prefixes and then prefixes that are not pre-established would be highly confusing in itself.
4. If the idea is not to have a list then I guess you're just saying that there is no need for namespacing whatsoever. I could agree with that in relation to the scenario for their usage put forward in the spec but not in the context of how they are actually used.

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  • Namespace prefix registry
    2005-04-15 17:50:36 mikeday [Reply]

    No, I don't think parsers have any need at all for a list of prefixes or any hard-coded associations.


    The examples I gave of a web browser recognising <html> or an XSLT processor recognising <xsl:transform> do not require the parser to do anything with prefixes and do not require a list of important namespaces.


    So I would agree with your point 4., that there is essentially no need for namespaces whatsoever, given the current meaning of the term. As to "how they are actually used", surely the XSLT use of namespaces is one of the most widely used; that was why I chose to discuss it.


    I would be interested in counter-examples from actual real use cases, though, as so far I have only seen hypothetical ones.


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