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RE: About Infosets

• From: Mike.Champion@S...
• To: xml-dev@x...
• Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 07:18:48 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Didier PH Martin [mailto:martind@n...]
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 10:11 AM
> To: Xml-Dev
> Subject: About Infosets
>

> So, what is needed to help access an infoset is an API
> allowing to extract nodelists with xpath expressions. I though DOM3 would do that
> but I have seen nor heard nothing said about it in the presented
> specifications (from W3C).

> Maybe some political good reasons behind this decision.
 
> Should I ask for a wake up call at the W3C hotel's front desk
> for the DOM group? :-)

I don't think the DOM group is asleep ... dazed maybe, by trying to make sense out of the implications of one abstract InfoSet, multiple data models, the distinct but partially-overlapping roles of Schemas and DTDs, whatever the PSVI really is, and the fact that it looks like multiple XML Schema specifications are going to viable in the Real World.  My post at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200103/msg00183.html went through some of the very real dilemmas that the group faces in trying to do an XPath API.  I assure you that they are not "political", or knee-jerk opposition to Microsoft innovations.

A year ago I thought that a simple selectNodes-like interface was an expedient way of offering an API to extract nodelists from xpath expressions.  It turns out that Microsoft has (quite pragmatically) skated around some of the thin ice, but a W3C WG has little choice but to rigorously define what the relationship between the DOM and XPath data model is, how to specify bind namespaces to the XPath expression, and how to handle the implication that a NodeList returned by the XPath expression would stay "live" as the tree changes.

I won't defend the W3C "front desk" for filling the deck with Jokers, but I'm convinced that the DOM group is playing the hand it was dealt about as well as it can.

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