[sc34wg3] Namespaces?

[Mary Nishikawa]

Thanks Patrick,

At 05:44 AM 9/23/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>Several recent comments have likened the TNC to "namespaces" and I was 
>wondering if some of other experiences with namespaces might be relevant 
>to this dicussion?
>
>1. Disambiguate terms (the most common use in XML)

Actually I went back to read the W3C  XML Infoset Spec   last night to have 
a better understanding of how some of the terms in the Infoset are being 
used in the SAM. I was struck by this

"Namespaces - XML 1.0 documents that do not conform to [Namespaces], though 
technically well-formed, are not considered to have meaningful information 
sets. "

In Namespaces in XML: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/
[Definition:] An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a 
URI reference [RFC2396], which are used in XML documents as element types 
and attribute names. XML namespaces differ from the "namespaces" 
conventionally used in computing disciplines in that the XML version has 
internal structure and is not, mathematically speaking, a set. These issues 
are discussed in "A. The Internal Structure of XML Namespaces".

How does this jive with our use of "Namespace?"

Since the XML Infoset is being used to provide us with a "consistent set of 
definitions" for use in the SAM,  I wonder if we should continue using the 
term "Namespace" in the Topic Map community's sense of the word.

With the reexamination of the definition of Scope, we may want to reexamine 
the use of the term "Namespace" or come up with some other word for this.

Maybe this has been brought up already and I missed it.

Cheers,
Mary


Mary Nishikawa,  EDMS Technical Advisor
Schlumberger K. K.
2-2-1 Fuchinobe
Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-0006
Tel:  +81-42-759-5376
Fax: +81-42-759-3563

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