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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XPath and a continuous, uniform information space
 I want to say that this message belongs in the XML-DEV Hall of Fame. Brilliantly put, all the points. I'll admit that Michael's original points baffled me entirely, but he does say now that he over-simplified, so fair play. But again Hans-Juergen's response articulated some aspects of XML-on-Web architecture better than anything else I've seen before. I won't be able to resist remarking that I wish he'd been the one articulating HyTime's Grove Model ;)
This point deserves some reinforcement. It's enough to point out one example of an "encouraged" Web architecture implementation that does not suffer the issues raised. I immediately thought of the HTTPd/Apache static file module. It provides seamless access to an arbitrarily large information space, including inter and intra-document navigation
Document root: http://myhost/folder1/folder1.1/doc1.html
http://myhost/folder1/folder1.1/doc1.1.1.html#section1
Relative navigation from one document/section to another <a href=""../../folder1.2/doc1.1.2.html#section3">...
Sure crude id/anchor is no match for the intra-document sophistication of XPath (XPointer would have helped, in theory) but that's the point entirely: XPath has the intrinsic expressiveness within the document, but is limited beyond that. I think the elegant "/" and "#" syntax of static file servers shows that the limitation in cross-document "mobility" does not come from Web architecture. Rather, the XPath/XSLT 1.0 language designers very sensibly kept their scope manageable by just focusing on the single document case. It sounds as if later XPath specs just haven't got around to remedying this, but I don't think it would be so terribly hard, once it comes to it.
Uche Ogbuji http://uche.ogbuji.net Founding Partner, Zepheira http://zepheira.com http://wearekin.org http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/uogbuji/ http://copia.ogbuji.net http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji http://twitter.com/uogbuji 
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