> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eliot Kimber [mailto:]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2004 August 03 10:08
> To: Erik Hennum
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: [dita] Proposal for DITA namespaces
>
> Erik Hennum wrote:
>
> > The DITA DTDs have seen much more use and attention than the
> > Schemas. (Even so, there have been flaws.) Because of the
> > greater attention and the stability of DTD implementations,
> > DTDs pose less risk than Schemas.
> >
> > All that said, I for one would very much like to see DITA
> > enhanced with a namespace scheme. We would need to find a
> > good way to do it and to avoid delay because of it.
>
> In this discussion I see the following questions:
>
> 1. Does DITA need namespaces? I say "absolutely", Erik is
> saying "very
> probably". I'm not sure if there is wider concensus one way
> or the other.
I'm saying, not for 1.0.
In developing the charter for this TC, we said the idea for 1.0
was basically to "rubber stamp" the existing IBM DITA stuff. I
fear adding namespaces is not that trivial an addition.
>
> 2. If there are name spaces, how many and how will they be
> used? This is
> very much an open question and will require experimentation
> and thought.
I agree--another reason I'd rather wait until after 1.0.
> And I will re-iterate my position on the need for namespaces,
> irrespective of the element type declaration mechanism used:
> there is no
> other standard way in XML to unambiguously declare that a document
> conforms to a particular set of rules.
Yes there is. We say so. DITA is working now for many people.
While I don't disagree that adding namespaces may be useful
in the future, I fail to see how it is a disaster to have DITA 1.0
be what DITA is currently. In fact, I fear it will be a bigger
disaster to make DITA 1.0 something that is non-trivially
different from what is already deployed in many places.
paul
