Attributes with Intent

[Peter Murray-Rust]

At 16:32 04/05/98 -0500, W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
>At 08:08 PM 5/4/98, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>
>>For example it seems that a Node must have 2-3 sets of methods:
>>	getAttributeValue(String attName);
>>	getPseudoAttributeValue(String specialAttnameInContext)
>>and 
>>	getPseudoAttributeValueAfterRemapping(String possiblyRemappedAttributeName)
>
>Pretty much.  I usually have these functions:
>
>- AttValue(string LocalAttName)
>  Returns value of attribute given name as specified for the element.
>- LocalAttName(string ArchAttName) 
>  Returns local name mapped to architectural name (e.g., whatever xml:lang
>  has been mapped to for this element).
>- ArchAttvalue(string ArchAttName)
>  Returns the value of an attribute given its architectural name. Resolves
>  remapping as necessary.
>- AttEffectiveValue(string LocalAttName)
>  Returns the effective value of an attribute given its local (to the
>document)
>  name. 
>- ArchAttEffectiveValue(string ArchAttName)
>  Returns the effective value of an attribute given its architectural
>  name.
>
>Obviously, the last two are implemented using the first three to recursively
>examine the ancestry of the current element.

This is exactly was I was after :-).  These may seem nobrainers to you, but
they aren't to people like me :-)

[...]
>>The touchstone of XML-applications - the
>>desperate Perl Hacker - is not necessarily going to build a stack of the
>>attributes of an/every element.
>
>How hard can it be?:
>
># NOTE: forgive my pseudo Perl syntax-- you know what I mean.
>@attstack()   ; # stack of attlist structures
>@attlist{name} = "value" ;# Associative array of atts values by name
>
>sub process_element() {
>   
>   push(attstack, attlist); # Push associative array of atts on stack
>   for each att in element.atts  ; # Method that returns array of att objects
>	$attlist{att.name} = att.value
>   next
>
The point is not that it is not hard to *do*, it's knowing exactly *what*
you have to do when.  For you it's second nature :-). That's why I'm asking...

	P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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