RE: English Language Tags

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by John McClure
>Hello David.
Like Sandy, this is my last word on this, promise! You seem to suggest that
creating UIDs are out-of-scope for the W3C, and that is why they haven't
done it. I am suggesting to the contrary that they already created a set of
mechanisms to achieve what you want -- XML Namespaces and XML Schemas. I
can easily decorate an <xsd:element> with my own meta-data about the
element-type and, as I noted for the Data Consortium Namespace, that
information can be reflected on the individual instances of the
element-type -- the DCN does it with the 'label' attribute on what are
called "attribute-elements", and relies on an RDFS dictionary to provide
the meta-definition of what are called "resource-elements." Anyway, since I
am interested in a high level of conformance between the DCN and ebXML, I
wish to understand as best I can why UIDs and GUIDs -- a technique I've not
seen embraced by the W3C -- is a solution to a problem that the W3C, I
thought, adequately addressed with XML Namespaces.
Regards,
John<

>>>>>>>>>>>>

John,

You mentioned the key word REGISTRY - that is what they will not be doing.

We all know that we can use XML syntax to orchestra the UID mechanism,
and the TA document contains 4 such alternatives, and there are others
I'm sure as Martin Bryan noted for us earlier.

Namespaces are simply a PREFIXING mechanism to avoid clashes
of use between included XML content.  Classic example is <company>

I've used <company> in my shipping address elements, you have used 
<company> in your billing party elements.  Its not the same thing, nor
is the data the same.  Therefore you need <shipping:company> and
<billing:company> to get out of the empasse.

Now - the W3C was solely concerned with name clashes.  We are
concerned with business semantics.  Just becuase you know its
called <company> - so what?  You will need the specific UID to
reference the complete definition within the Registry.  A query 
based solely on the word 'company' would garner dozens of hits within
the registry and lead to you not being able determine the exact 
definition reliably.  Same thing for the excellent 'Stock' example
cited earlier.

DW.