Re: ***********Transformation of an XML document conta

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Subject: Re: ***********Transformation of an XML document containing a default namespace ************
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 15:30:13 -0400

At 01/10/24 17:40 +0100, David Carlisle wrote:

> I tried doing something like this a few weeks ago and it didn't work
> for me.  There seems to be no way to control which namespace prefix
> (including the "empty" prefix) the serializer uses if there is more
> than one prefix for a given namespace URI.

there are two answers to this: "yes" and "no".

According to the spec, you _never_ get any control over th eprefixes
used, and it is perfectly OK for an XSLT serialiser to always use
prefixes like kmsqzzxss1: kmsqzzxss2: .... even if the stylesheet uses
fo: or whatever.  (So this is the no, it can't be done answer)

However most (all?) systems do in fact try to preserve the namespace
prefixes in most situtaions.

Can we not, however, assume that the processor has to preserve the namespace prefix regardless of what the Spec says?

The reason I ask came up when I wrote a stylesheet that writes stylesheets, and I used a processor that did not preserve the namespace prefix ... the author of the processor ended up changing it so it does preserve the prefix because this particular situation I had (and anyone else could have) requires that it be done.

Consider I have a stylesheet using "xsl:" for XSLT instructions and "xslo:" for my result tree prefix where the XSLT stylesheet generates an XSLT stylesheet using namespace-alias accordingly. Given I am using "xslo:" in the template for my result, I may have the following:

  <xsl:template match="foo">
    <xslo:value-of select="system-property('xslo:version')"/>
  </xsl:template>

If the processor does not preserve the prefix that I use, then the resulting XSLT stylesheet will not have a valid string being passed to the system-property() function, as there would be no namespace mapped to the prefix I use in my function argument. And no amount of heuristics would help a processor unambiguously find my use of namespace prefixes in other contexts than a namespace prefix of elements or attributes.

I hope this helps.

........................ Ken


--
G. Ken Holman                      mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crane Softwrights Ltd.               http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/s/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0     +1(613)489-0999   (Fax:-0995)
Web site:     XSL/XML/DSSSL/SGML/OmniMark services, training, products.
Book:  Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath ISBN 1-894049-06-3
Article: What is XSLT? http://www.xml.com/pub/2000/08/holman/index.html
Next public training (instructor-live, Internet-live, and web-based):
-2001-10-22,11-01,11-02,11-05,11-19,11-21,12-03,12-05,12-09,12-10,12-19

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