Fw: Namespaces does *not* formally introduce "global attributes"

[David Megginson]

Oren Ben-Kiki writes:

 [snip]

 > Additionally, implementers would have been able to easily add a
 > namespace processing module on top of their current XML parsers (a
 > SAX namespace expansion filter, for example, is trivial when
 > implemented this way), _without changing the interfaces_. Future
 > implementations might use better interfaces - such as APIs for
 > accessing just the "namespace part" or the "local part" of an
 > expanded name - but the point is every XML application would go on
 > working as it is, without any changes.

 [snip]

 > An obvious consequence of this decision is that implementers were
 > hesitant to implement namespaces this way.

Actually, so far, pretty much everyone seems to have implemented
namespaces this way, and it's working like a charm: it's standard in
the very popular Perl XML:Parser module (which uses Expat), I wrote my
own SAX filter (unreleased) which works this way, John Cowan has
released a SAX filter that works this way, and I assume that all RDF
and XSL tools built on top of SAX work this way.

I rely quite heavily on the namespace processing in XML::Parser for
some of my production-grade deliverables to customers.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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