"Bob Smith" <bobsmith1@m...> wrote in message
news:dcshko$sns$1@p......
> Steve Jorgensen wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 19:23:37 +0200, Bob Smith
> > <bobsmith1@m...> wrote:
> >
> >>hi all,
> >>I pretty new to xml, what does xmlns mean?
> >>like in:
> >><rdf:RDF
> >> xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
> >> xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
> >> xmlns:perljobs="http://jobs.perl.org/rss/"
> >> xmlns:taxo="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/"
> >> xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
> >> xmlns:syn="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
> >> xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
> >>>
> >>tia
> >
> > Each xmlns... attribute means that, for the RDF element and any elements
> > it contains, those are the prefixes used to qualify specific namespaces
of
> > elements (and attributes if required).
> >
> > xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
> > means that any element prefixed with rdf: (including the rdf:RDF element
> > belongs to the namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#.
> >
> > xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
> > means that any element with no prefix at all belongs to the
> > http://purl.org/rss/1.0/ namespace.

> right, so what is the idea on the client side?
> okey so we have namespaces, but what are they good for? Does the namespace
> declare data types or only names?

Namespaces are used for creating globally unique names, using URIs in much
the same way as package names are used in Java. When a URI you control is
combined with a name, that combination is guaranteed to be unique. This
mechanism makes it possible to identify names from different XML
vocabularies, and to mix different vocabularies without conflicts between
names.

// Magnus