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Re: [good] Question about NS 1.1

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: [good] Question about NS 1.1
• From: james anderson <james.anderson@s...>
• Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 10:44:10 +0200
• Organization: nil
• References: <002701c1e065$0df5b610$6501a8c0@pcukmka>
• Reply-to: james.anderson@s...

Michael Kay wrote:
> 
> James Anderson asked:
> >
> > Are there really cases where one copies text nodes from a context in
> > which a prefix had one binding to a context in which a prefix has a
> > different binding with the intent of effecting a change in the implied
> > universal names.
> 
> It may be that the prefix has a different binding in the target context;
> it's more likely that it has no binding.

Which means that, while the special case does work, for all the effort,
in the general case, the product can be an mal-formed dom. Even where is
it expected that one is testing for duplicate attribute names, that just
means that the operation will faill unnecessarily.

> 
> Consider a stylesheet:
> 
> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="...." version="1.0"
>                 xmlns:math="java:java.lang.Math">
> 
> <xsl:template match="circle">
>   <area><xsl:value-of select="math:pi() * @radius * @radius"/></area>
> </xsl:template>
> 
> </xsl:stylesheet>
> 
> You now want to copy this template rule to a different stylesheet.

Yes, I would.

>                                                                    To do so,
> you have to copy the namespace declaration xmlns:math,

No you don't. If you model the value of the select attribute in the
intended domain.

>                                                        otherwise the
> template rule is meaningless. And of course, you want to do the copy using
> general-purpose XML tools, tools which don't understand that there's
> anything special about the select attribute of an <xsl:value-of> element.

We differ here. To pose a rhetorical question, are they really xml
tools? It's not an issue of "allow". it's a question of whether one
should ever have expected it to work.

> 
> Now, I hear lots of people saying we shouldn't have allowed this, and I'm
> inclined to agree. But we do allow it, and it works today, and people are
> taking advantage of the fact that it works today.

Years ago, when I worked as an operator for BBN, there were occasions
when I would witness TENEX wizards hunched over the operator's console
typing system patches into the debugger. I was in school then, so I
worked nights and weekends. Which means I never had a chance to overhear
the conversations between the CEO and one of them when they made a typo.
Maybe they never did. I suppose that means the process worked.

The computer room was pretty big. Eventually a twin appeared next to the
production system and it was more likely to see a system wizard hunched
over its console.

>                                                     And I have yet to see a
> proposal that cleans up the namespace model without breaking applications
> that work today according to the current specs.

To the extent that an application expects a prefix-namespace binding
which was apparent in the dynamic context of a given document's parser
to have indefinite extent, the application is already broken.

.

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>

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