Re: Namespaces and URNs

John Cowan (cowan@locke.ccil.org)
Thu, 06 Aug 1998 16:48:24 -0400


Dean Roddey wrote:

> Ok, so I'm searching the 300,000 acronyms in my head and FPI is not popping up
> :-) Did I miss class that day? What does FPI stand for?

Formal Public Identifiers. A convention for defining public identifiers.

> Then the parser could see, even if a DTD came in from different sources via
> different URIs, that in effect they were the exact same version and that
> subsequent instances of the DTD could be just ignored and the current content
> used?

Namespace names don't have to be dereferenceable:
"http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/labor_yutz" is a perfectly good namespace name,
even though there's nothing there (you'll get an error if you
try to dereference it), because I assigned it and the namespace
names beginning http://www.ccil.org/~cowan" belong to me.

In particular, there is no reason why the referent of the namespace
name should be a DTD.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)