Re: [Nautilus-list] Please add an XML namespace to Nautilus metadata serialization

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org>]

On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 09:39:03AM -0700, Darin Adler wrote:
> > Could you add a namespace to nautilus metadata ?
> > When I briefly looked during Andy presentation at Guadec, this was missing
> > This is as simple as adding an
> > xmlns="http://nautilus.eazel.com/nautilus/1.0/";
> > or
> > xmlns="http://www.gnome.org/nautilus/1.0/";
> > attribute on the top element.
> > The URL don't really need to be retrievable, but it should be anchored
> > into an available Web space. I suggest to keep a version number and a
> > / at the end of the URL.
> > Even if you don't use it now, this can have serious impact on reusability
> > of such informations, I suggest to add it, it's cheap, won't burden you
> > but can make a serious difference in the long term.
> 
> We will definitely consider change. Ian McKellar may be changing the
> implementation of metadata, and he mentioned the XML namespace.
> 
> But I really wish you had said something specific (anything) about what
> "serious difference in the long term" this will make. I believe you that it
> would help, but I'd like to understand *how* so that I will know know the
> importance of making this (admittedly easy and cheap) change.

<short>
  Namespace can be used to direct the processing of a given piece of
XML to the right software handler.
</short>

  Consider the fact that the XML (meta) language is being employed to
express a variety of datatype and format, and the fact that they 
supposedly they are all using the same Mime-Type (or basically only for
a few of those language will actually get a mime type registered), the 
namespace is used as a way to disambiguate the use of XML data. They
can all fed an XML parser but only another level of software can 
extract further semantic. XML namespaces are used exactly for this
and also to be able to disambiguate vocabularies coming from different
sources within a single document (but i don't suggest to use the
namespace on Nautilus metadata for this).

   Is this a decent answer your question ? 

Daniel

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