RE: attribute nodes

I think the explanation, as some have implied in earlier discussion on this
topic, is the real world side of the analogy, in which there exists a node
called "teenager?.

Maybe the analogy isn't breaking down as Mike suggests but is simply more
true to life than traditional conceptual models.

Max
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Michael
Fitzgerald
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 10:29 PM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE:  attribute nodes


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

[1]Aho and Ullman, /Foundations of Computer Science/, p. 208 (WH Freeman
1992)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Michael Kay
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 1:31 AM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE:  attribute nodes
>
>
> > Why is it that an attribute node has an element as a parent
> > node but is not the child of this element node?
>
> Because the WG was uninspired in its choice of terminology. It
> was perhaps a
> mistake to use two terms "parent" and "child" (which in biology
> are the two
> directions of one relationship) for two different relationships
> that are not
> inverse of each other.
>
> But all analogies break down anyway: why don't nodes have TWO parents?
>
> I think the WG at one time had the element being "owner" of the attribute,
> rather than "parent", and the attribute had no parent. But that led to an
> unnecessary extra axis, and made it more difficult to define
> "..", and more
> difficult to define the ancestor axis. Perhaps the parent axis should have
> been renamed "owner". But then someone would have objected to
> children being
> "owned"...
>
> Mike Kay


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list