Re: QNames

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ James Clark <jjc@jclark.com> was heard to say:
[...]
| add an additional inherited attribute "datatypeNamespace" which can be
| specified on any element (similar to the "ns" attribute).  The type
| attribute on <data> and <value> would be an NCName. The inherited value of
| the datatypeNamespace attribute would determine the URI of the datatype for
| <data> and <value>.  (If we do this, we should rename the "ns" attribute,
| perhaps to "namespace".)

I wonder if this is going to be much more confusing in even the simple
cases of mixed datatype namespaces.  Suppose I have two datatype
namespaces, foo and bar. Using QNames, I'd probably say things like
this:

  <data type="foo:number"/>
  ...
  <data type="bar:number"/>

With the inherited dataNamespace, this will be:

  <data type="number"/>
  ...
  <data type="number"/>

And I'll have to go back in the document looking for the nearest
enclosing dataNamespace.

While it's entirely possible for xmlns declarations to remap foo and
bar making this no less confusing, that's not often going to be the
case. But dataNamespace is always going to make me go looking.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
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