Re: Varying the attlist for an element depending on the element's

james anderson (James.Anderson@mecomnet.de)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 15:00:51 +0100

While the namespace proposal as it stands does not describe "facilities for
defining syntax or semantics", it is by no means silent on them.
My note was so full of subjunctives that I trust no one understood it to
suggest that the namespace proposal prescribed such a mechanism.
It pointed out only that the proposal, as it stands, does not preclude such a
mechanism. An alternative wording in the noted paragraph could have done so.
It is a rather severe understatement to equate the passage with "silence".

Andrew Layman wrote:
>
> The paragraph quoted below beginning "Each Type..." is intended only to
> describe scoping of attribute names matching the scoping expressed in DTDs
> today. That is, it simply says that the (unqualified) attlist for distinct
> elements types is distinct; that the unqualified attribute types of distinct
> element types are distinct.
>
> The namespaces proposal serves only to provide a mechanism for making names
> universally identifyable by associating them with Universal Resource
> Identifiers. It is silent on any possible or speculative facilities for
> defining syntax or semantics.
>
...

>> "Each type in the All Element Types Partition has an associated namespace in
>> which appear the names of the unqualified attributes that are provided for
>> that element. This is a traditional namespace because the appearance of
>> duplicate attribute names on an element is forbidden by XML 1.0. The
>> combination of the attribute name with the element's type and namespace name
>> uniquely identifies each unqualified attribute."