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Re: RELAX NG Marketing (was RE: Do Names Matter?)

• To: "Matthew Gertner" <matthew.gertner@s...>, "'Rick Jelliffe'" <ricko@a...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: RELAX NG Marketing (was RE: Do Names Matter?)
• From: "James Clark" <jjc@j...>
• Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 11:33:37 +0700
• References: <DC1124C4368AA9438D9DEC34ECB6F162013EB806@o...>

> > I don't think it's important to support XSD-style element
> > defaulting (which
> > says what happens not when you omit an element, but when you
> > specify an
> > empty value for an element).
>
> I'm not entirely sure what the objection to this is. Wouldn't it make more
> sense to default an empty element than to insert the element automatically
> (which could be taken care of by setting the minimum occurrence to one)?

How would setting the minimum occurrence to one automatically insert the
element along with its value?

> Or
> do you think that the whole idea of element defaulting is misguided?

Support for attribute defaulting is arguably desirable because there is a
long-established practice of doing it and people have got used to depending
on it.  There is no such well-established practice for element defaulting.
What is the compelling use case for being able to specify an empty element
in the instance and have the validator insert a value specified in the
schema?  This is not at all the same kind of thing as attribute defaulting
and the existing practice of attribute defaulting provides no justification
for such a feature. Why should this one particular kind of transformation be
specified in a schema?

James

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RELAX NG Marketing (was RE: Do Names Matter?)
    • From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>

• References:
  • RE: RELAX NG Marketing (was RE: Do Names Matter?)
    • From: Matthew Gertner <matthew.gertner@s...>

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