"Namespaces in XML" idea?

[Ronald Bourret]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

> | It would be nice if and when the namespaces recommendation is
> | updated if it mas made a formality that a conforming namespace aware
> | processor strips namespace nodes from the document model before
> | presenting the parsed content to the application.
>
> Do you think this is really necessary? I think in some cases it would
> be desirable to see them, and in most cases not. So even if this
> change is made I think it should be "at user option".
>
> Anyway, it's a rather obvious user option, so methinks there isn't all
> that much need to mention it in the spec. The xmlproc namespace code
> currently has an option that lets the user decide whether the
> declaration attribute should be reported or not.

This is exactly the kind of thing that should be mentioned in this or any 
other spec -- one person's obvious is another person's obscure and the 
point of a spec is to sort it all out.

By the way, I was a little surprised to read that expat does not pass xmlns 
attributes to the application.  I had always assumed that attributes were 
part of the document's data and therefore the processor was required to 
pass them to the application.  On re-reading the XML spec, I am not so 
sure.  Section 2.4 defines markup as "start-tags, end-tags, empty-element 
tags, ..."  Are attributes part of start-tags?  If so, this would certainly 
influence the question of whether to use elements or attributes, although I 
find it hard to believe any parser wouldn't pass attributes to the 
application.  If not, why isn't expat's behavior illegal?

-- Ron Bourret


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