Namespaces (was Re: Equations)

Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Thu, 05 Aug 1999 18:27:08 -0700


At 09:21 PM 8/4/99 -0400, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> Which appears to be pretty much "ignore the problem" - ie.
>don't bother with namespaces since "we don't see a need for them and
>their break compatibility".
>
> I can certainly appreciate the latter issue, however, the
>former is going to bite you on the behind as you move to support
>other XML-based standards such as (and perhaps specifically) SVG.
>Since one would expect an SVG graphic to live inside a .abw XML
>document, it's pretty important (imperative?) that a parser be able
>to determine what to do with the appropriate tags - especially since
>SVG will be a namespaced standard to start with, and you'll want/need
>to keep those tags in tact.
>
> At a minimum, I'd suggest updating to the latest expat (1.1),
>which I believe supports namespaces.

Leonard,

Please reread that thread a little more carefully. I didn't post it to shut
Dan up -- as if I would want to or even could -- but rather to get more
feedback from folks who know more about namespaces than we do.

I still believe that there's no problem to ignore, at least not yet.

As I suggested before, it sounds like namespaces would be of use to us when
we have SVG code to take advantage of it. From a quick reading of the spec,
my understanding is that you don't *have* to explicitly reference tags in
the default namespace, in which case there's no reason to break
compatibility. We'd only use explicit namespaces for subsidiary formats,
like SVG.

As for expat, I'm glad to hear that a newer version will handle namespaces
for us. Having met James, I'm not at all surprised -- he's just that good,
and we're using his code for a reason. :-)

Bottom Line
-----------
We're quite willing to invest the effort to deal with namespaces when and if
they add end-user-visible functionality to the product. I remain to be
convinced that today is that day.

Of course, I'd be more than happy to accept patches from someone else who
feels stringly enough about the issue that they're willing to do the work
sooner.

Paul



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