The ‘A new understood namespace subsumes a previously-understood namespace if it includes all of the elements, attributes, and attribute values of the previously-understood namespace.’ definition for ’subsumes’ has a significant drawback: it introduces a subsuming relationship between any two namespaces that are only related by an inclusion relationship. This is damageable to the clarity of the specification (unless this implication is wanted - but that would need further explanation). This will damage interoperability whenever two alternative namespaces meant to extend the specification will happen to be bound by an inclusion relationship. This is difficult to check as stated (without an indication by the specification that one namespace is ‘included’ into the other, the verification of the property is tedious at best). This fails to convey the intent of the specification authors to explicitly replace such or such part of the understood namespaces by others. This fails to define what ‘includes all of the elements, attribures, and attribute values of [a] namespace’ may be (the XML-based first-level answer, that would be that elements and attributes of the same local names exist, is obviously not enough). All in all, the ’subsume’ concept is not properly defined by the OOXML text, and at least of its possible interpretations conveys undesireable semantics.

Provide a proper and acceptable (in terms of semantics) definition for what it means for a namespace to subsume another one, or else drop it from the OOXML text. Any acceptable definition would, in our opininion, tolerate that a namespace that is ‘included’ (term to be further defined by the spec) into another namespace not be subsumed by the said namespace.

page 10, line 9 Part 5, Section 8.1 Terminology

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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment FR-0557 (Modified: 2008-01-11) Agreed; the definition of “subsume” will be clarified to include both the relationship between namespaces and the retained semantic processing behaviour of the markup consumer, as follows. Clause §8.1, lines 9-11: A new understood namespace subsumes a previously-understood namespace if it includes all of the elements, attributes, and attribute values of the previously-understood namespace and uses identically the element local names, prefixed and unprefixed attribute names, attribute values, and element contents . Clause §10.1, lines 3-12: A markup specification defines whether its usage of a namespace subsumes another namespace . The markup specification that defines a subsuming namespace shall require that the subsuming namespace if it include s all of the elements, attributes, and attribute values of the subsumed namespace and . A markup specification that defines a subsuming namespace shall further require that any instance of the following constructs that would be recognized in the subsumed namespace shall also be recognized and interpreted identically by consumers and producers in the subsuming namespace. Element local names Unprefixed attribute names of elements Prefixed attribute names of elements Attribute values Element contents