namespaces discussions off-topic (was Re: [uf-discuss] changing abbr-design-pattern to title-design-pattern?)

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 5/1/07 1:01 AM, "Ian Davis" <lists at iandavis.com> wrote:

> On 01/05/2007 07:26, Tantek Çelik wrote:
>> It's been tried by numerous groups, before microformats, and after.  It's
>> even been tried in the context of RSS and RDF, and in practice people write
>> scrapers that look for namespace prefixes as if they are part of the element
>> name, not as mere shorthands for namespace URIs.
> 
> Isn't this a narrow view of namespaces, i.e. the XML viewpoint. There
> are many types of non-URI/QName namespacing mechanisms such as Java
> package name conventions, Perl module conventions etc. Are those
> offtopic too?

This is why I precisely said (in the paragraph that was not quoted), with
emphasis added:

"Namespaced **content** on the Web has failed."

AFAIK, Java package name conventions, Perl module conventions are *not*
considered *content* that is served on the web.  They're code.  And they're
not served, they're executed server-side.

Namespaced **content** has failed because it encourages proprietary
siloization of data, rather than interoperability.  Namespaces perform a
very different function in code (with different needs), despite the cosmetic
similarities (use of ":" etc.).


>> If you want to carry on a theoretical discussion of namespaces, please do so
>> elsewhere, for in practice, discussing them is a waste of time, and
>> off-topic for microformats lists.
> 
> Apologies for this post. If the answer to the above is yes then this
> will be the last from me on this topic.

Why would a discussion of namespaced *code* be *on* topic?  How is it
relevant to microformats?  At a minimum, it would be more appropriate for
the microformats-dev list than the microformats-discuss list, but even then
I fail to see how it is germane to the domain.

Tantek