On Monday, January 24, 2005, at 04:42 PM, Danny Ayers wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:52:52 -0700, Antone Roundy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Monday, January 24, 2005, at 02:03 PM, Danny Ayers wrote:
Atom processors MAY interpret unprefixed attribute names as their
namespace-qualified equivalents.
If they do, then all Atom attribute names MUST appear in the Atom
namespace.

I'd suggest slightly different language, such as:

"Atom processors MAY interpret unprefixed attribute names in elements
from the Atom namespace as if they were in the Atom namespace."

Why I prefer the above:

1) It explicitly applies this rule only to Atom core elements--not
extensions.
2) "their namespace-qualified equivalents": Unless the spec defines
namespace-qualified attributes for Atom, which it doesn't,
namespace-qualified equivalents don't actually exist, right?
3) It combines the two sentences, which I think is more clear.

Yep, I reckon that's an improvement.

One thing I'm not sure about - where it currently says "Atom
processors", perhaps that would be better as merely "Atom consumers".
For the reasons Sam gave, we don't really want extra variability in
what's being produced, but this still would still allow RDF-like
consumers to interpret the feed as an RDF-like language.
Does that make sense, or is there a case I'm missing here?

Agreed--"consumers" is better. Perhaps language should also be added to ensure that people know that they're not supposed to actually add a namespace prefix to the attributes. For example:

"Atom consumers MAY interpret unprefixed attribute names in elements from the Atom namespace as if they were in the Atom namespace. However, Atom producers MUST NOT add a namespace prefix to attributes defined by the Atom format specification."

BTW, am I remembering correctly that "xml:" in "xml:lang" and "xml:base" isn't a namespace prefix? You don't see xmlns:xml="..."--so is "xml:" not a namespace prefix, or does it just not have to be declared? If it IS a namespace prefix, then the above language works only if you don't consider publishing "xml:base" and "xml:lang" to be ADDING the prefix, since it was already there in the spec, but it may be possible to word it better.



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