SAX2 Namespace Support

Leigh Dodds ldodds at ingenta.com
Wed Jan 5 15:47:15 GMT 2000


> In principle (the principle of least surprise), it's very bad
> behaviour for two objects to be == in C++ or equals() in Java if any
> of their publicly-accessible fields differ.  Think of sets, for
> example.

In this instance though your level of surprise is going to relate 
to how familiar you are with the Namespaces spec. After reading 
it I'd be surprised if two QNames with the same URIs and same local 
parts aren't the considered equal.

The problem though boils down to how often, in reality, XML instances 
will have the same Namespace declared twice, with different prefixes.

I'd have thought this would be pretty unlikely. In a data interchange 
context standardising prefixes for Namespaces would mitigate this 
'problem' and would probably have beneficial side-effects as well.

In a document authoring context I can't imagine using the same 
Namespace with two prefixes, except by accident. Readibility 
(of the XML) is reduced with Namespaces anyway, sprinkling additional 
prefixes around makes this worse.

2-penneth worth.

L.

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