RE: attribute nodes

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Subject: RE: attribute nodes
From: "Christopher R. Maden" <crism@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 00:58:56 -0700

At 22:29 4-05-2001, Michael Fitzgerald wrote:

Thanks all for answers. In the traditional tree data model in CS, a good
forty years old at least, "if p is the parent of node c, we also say that c
is a child of p." [1] XSLT/XPath in a sense breaks this traditional
relationship wrt attributes, perhaps only as a convenience for tree
traversal. I don't know. I'm asking.  -Mike

And Michael Kay answered, accurately, to my recollection. What additional information are you seeking?

You'll note that the Aho & Ullman definition appears almost verbatim in the XML 1.0 Recommendation. It applies only to elements - a child element has a parent element, and a parent element may have child elements. XPath adopted that model, and extended the terminology where it was logical: for comments, processing instructions, and text nodes, which are ordered within the three. Attributes are not children; I've never seen a discussion of XML that describes them as such, and they don't fit with the observed user expectations of children. They are illustrated as decorations on a tree or tags on boxes, not as descendants or nested boxes.

But this presents a problem. We have the attribute axis for referencing attribute nodes, distinct from the child axis. But an attribute has an "owner" that it is interesting to discuss; what do we call it? There was some considerable debate about breaking the symmetry of child and parent, but for simplicity and least surprise (except among hard-core CS nerds), the final decision seems to have worked well.

-Chris
--
Christopher R. Maden, XML Consultant
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Current Thread

RE: attribute nodes, (continued)
- Chris Bayes - Wed, 2 May 2001 17:20:11 -0400 (EDT)
- Michael Kay - Thu, 3 May 2001 04:27:14 -0400 (EDT)
  - Michael Fitzgerald - Sat, 5 May 2001 01:29:18 -0400 (EDT)
    - Max Dunn - Sat, 5 May 2001 02:55:38 -0400 (EDT)
    - Christopher R. Maden - Sat, 5 May 2001 04:02:55 -0400 (EDT) <=
    - Michael Fitzgerald - Sat, 5 May 2001 15:03:20 -0400 (EDT)
    - Christopher R. Maden - Sat, 5 May 2001 16:16:18 -0400 (EDT)
- Dan Diebolt - Wed, 2 May 2001 16:23:29 -0400 (EDT)

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