Dan Connolly announced a decision of the XML Plenary "to deprecate the use of relative URI references in namespace declarations."

While the use of relative URI references in namespace declarations isn't outright banned, and the announcement acknowledges that "they conform to the Namespace Recommendation of January 1999," the W3C is not going to support them:

"later specifications such as DOM, XPath, etc. will define no interpretation for them."

The decision brings to an end months of wrangling which produced approximately 1700 messages on the xml-uri@w3.org mailing list.

Related stories:

• Namespaces URIs logjam moving toward a decision
• Fixed base might end the disagreement about namespaces URIs
• Bouncing debate on Namespace URIs
• News from the Trenches (from XML.com)
• Namespace Trouble (from XML.com)
• Namespaces discussion underway
• Berners-Lee throws open the Namespace issue, responds to the "Pope"
• XML-URI activity proposal available for discussion