Re: [dita] Proposal for DITA namespaces

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

Though it's true that RFC 3121 defines a URN namespace for OASIS, 
Norm (the author of said RFC) has changed his mind on this.  See:
http://norman.walsh.name/2004/03/03/266NorthPleasant which Norm 
wrote after the W3C TAG's Web Architecture document at
http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
came out in favor of resolvable URIs for namespace names.  Norm
now suggests using http: URIs for namespace names.

DocBook NG uses http://docbook.org/docbook-ng .

DocBook V5 will probably use something analogous. 

paul

At 16:19 2004-07-16 -0400, Eric Sirois wrote:

>Here is quick note to formally introduce and start some discussions
>regarding namespaces for DITA XML Schemas.
>
>As per the RFC 3121(A URN Namespace for OASIS) [1] from IETF below you will
>find some of the namespace that
>could be applied to DITA XML Schemas.
>
>Here is a snippet the RCF that is of interest to the TC:
>The RCF general structure for Technical Committee is the following:
>Technical Committee Work Products
>
>         The "tc" hierarchy is for work products of OASIS Technical
>         Committees.  The general structure of the NSS in the tc
>         hierarchy has the form:
>
>            urn:oasis:names:tc:{tc-id}:{type}{:subtype}?:{document-id}
>
>         where "tc-id" is a unique identifier for the Technical
>         Committee, and the remaining fields are assigned as per the
>         specification hierarchy.
>
>Namespace suggestions:
>Here are two namespaces that Eliot has been using for his modified version
>the XML Schemas for his application xiruss-t
>map - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:map
>ditabase - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:base
>I believe in this case that the four base XML Schema all have the same
>namespaces.
>
>Below is a list of namespaces that could apply to topic, task, concept, and
>reference.
>topic - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:topic
>task - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:task
>concept  - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:concept
>reference - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:reference
>
>Domains could have their own namespaces (as part of Method 2 - see below).
>highlight-domain - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:highlight-domain
>programming-domain urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:programming-domain
>ui-domain - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:ui-domain
>utilities-domain - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:utilities-domain
>software-domain - urn:oasis:names:tc:dita:software-domain
>
>
>There are a couple methods in which a namespaces can be bound to the XML
>Schemas.
>
>Method - 1
>  -The namespace for each specialization is bound in the schema shell
>files.
>  -The namespace would then be assumed (chameleon effect) by all included
>schemas in the primary XML Schema and would not
>affect specialization. For example, wiztask which includes task, topic and
>the domains would all have the same namespace.
>With this method we can make full use of XML Schema inheritance to create
>new specialization.  Inheritance helps developers validate
>new DITA specialization when validating the XML Schema rather that manually
>checking whether or not a new specialization follows the
>DITA specialization rules.
>
>Method - 2
>  -The namespace for each specialization is bound in the in the schema
>shell specializations and modules.
>  -If domain and specialization have their own individual namespaces in
>this case. For example, wiztask would  import task, topic and the domains
>would all have different namespaces a could pose some potential issues with
>regards to stylesheets and conref with XSLT 1.0 processors.
>  - This method would also have an impact on the architecture of the XML
>Schemas. Currently, we attempt to use XML Schema inheritance to help
>    validate the new XML Schema specialization with the hope that XS 1.1
>will resolve a lot, if not all, of the issues regarding inheritance today.
>    XML Schema inheritance can only apply to schemas in the same namespace
>or null (no) namespace.  This would mean that the XML Schemas
>    would have to be specialized without XML Schema inheritance.
>
>[1]http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3121.txt
>
>Kind regards,
>Eric
>Eric A. Sirois
>Staff Software Developer
>DB2 Universal Database - DBA XML Tools Development
>IBM Canada Ltd. - Toronto Software Lab
>Email: esirois@ca.ibm.com
>Phone:(905) 413-2841
>Blue Pages (Internal)