Subject: Re: This Document Defines Two Namespaces (was Re: Combined set of issues ...)

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:29:04 -0800

On Oct 31, 2005, at 1:52 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:
>
> XX. IANA Considerations
>
> XX.1. URI schemes
>
> This specification defines two URI schemes:
>
> 1) the "opaquelocktoken" URI scheme for the encoding of lock tokens, 
> defined in Appendix XYZ, and
>
> 2) the "DAV" URI scheme, which historically was used in RFC2518 to 
> disambiguate WebDAV property and XML element names and which continues 
> to be used for that purpose in this specification and others extending 
> WebDAV. Creation of identifiers in the "DAV:" namespace is controlled 
> by the IETF.
>
> To ensure correct interoperation based on this specification, IANA 
> must reserve the URI namespaces starting with "DAV:" and with 
> "opaquelocktoken:" for use by this specification, its revisions, and 
> related WebDAV specifications.
>
> XX.2. Other namespaces
>
> This document also defines multiple namespaces, including the 
> namespace of property names, the namespace of WebDAV-specific XML 
> elements used within property values and the namespace of 
> pre-/postcondition names. Namespaced XML element names (pairs of 
> "namespace name" and "local name" as per [XML-Infoset]) are used for 
> all of them, for several reasons. Due to the fact that XML namespace 
> names syntactically use URIs, assignment of names does not require a 
> request to a central naming authority, and hence allow identifiers to 
> be quickly defined by any WebDAV user or application.  Therefore, no 
> actions on behalf of IANA are required to manage these namespaces.
>

I find this last paragraph pretty hard to read.  Assuming that the 
point is to convey what IANA is not involved in and why, how about this 
alternate wording and you can tell me if I've overlooked some other 
point:

"WebDAV uses namespaces to disambiguate property names and XML elements 
(used in property values and more generally in XML request and response 
bodies).  Any WebDAV user or application can define a new namespace 
with which to declare custom properties or XML elements.  IANA does not 
need to manage such namespaces, property names or element names."

Or even simpler:

"XML namespaces disambiguate WebDAV property names and XML elements.  
Any WebDAV user or application can define a new namespace in order to 
create custom properties or extend WebDAV XML syntax.  IANA does not 
need to manage such namespaces, property names or element names."

Also I think it's readable enough to have this section whole without 
subsections as it's pretty small.

The rest of the changes I am fine with and I've heard no other 
suggestions so I'll apply those changes.

Lisa