[Dev] Proposal: simplify parcel XML namespaces

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 10:43 AM 6/27/2005 -0700, Katie Capps Parlante wrote:
>I think we'd indeed like to explore this option, but its not really on the 
>table for 0.6, as it will have a non trivial impact on the existing code. 
>The schema API was our major step in improving the situation for 0.6. 
>PJE's namespace proposal is a low-impact, incremental improvement that is 
>also feasible for 0.6.

Shall I go ahead and implement it, then?  It's one of the first steps to 
reducing the number of empty/redundant parcel.xml files we have, and to 
reducing the number of passes over those files that the parcel loader has 
to do in order to start Chandler.

At this point, the basis for Bryan's -1 vote can be bypassed by allowing 
the old http://osafoundation.org/parcels/ syntax as a backward-compatible 
alternative.  Bryan's objection was that it would be ''introducing the 
potential for conflict (however unlikely) with someone else who arbitrarily 
breaks the same rule and picks "parcel:"''.  So, if this exceedingly 
unlikely conflict did in fact occur, then the affected person could switch 
to using the old http://osafoundation.org/ form and nullify the conflict.

I have no objection to retaining this capability indefinitely (since it's 
effectively a minor syntax sugaring or un-sugaring), if it eliminates the 
only outstanding -1 objection.