Everyone's favorite deconstructionist, Don Park, started
a discussion on XML-DEV about XML namespaces. Are they
really a "good thing"? What ill effects might they have?
David Megginson responded
by explaining the benefits of packaging constructs in
programming languages, testifying to the usefulness of
namespaces: "I programmed for over a decade without package
names (namespaces), and I would never want to go back. "
Didier Martin clearly needed
more rest before he wrote his reply.
The general opinion was that namespaces aided element
re-use from other vocabularies within different document
contexts. Megginson pointed out that this wasn't an issue in
SGML where the document was the atomic unit.
There was some discussion over whether a central registry
of namespaces was required, but the consensus among replies
was the an open evolution of namespaces might be better.