XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

At 10:04 AM -0400 9/25/02, John Cowan wrote:


> xml:base attributes should be assimilated to set the base URI, and should
> not appear as Attribute nodes.  IOW, the same treatment namespaces get.

I thought about this for a while, but last night as I was falling 
asleep I had a flash of insight that convinced me this wouldn't work. 
Surprisingly, I even remembered that this morning.

There are numerous pre-XML base specs such as XPath, XSLT, and others 
that treat xml:base as just another attribute. That is, they have no 
specific knowledge of it. They do not treat it specially. For 
instance, you can write an XSLT style sheet that deletes all xml:base 
attributes are absolutizes all URLs in xml:base attributes. If we 
gave xml:base the same treatment as namespaces, it would not be 
possible to implement XSLT, XPath, etc. on top of XOM.

Namespaces predate most other interesting applications. XML Base does 
not. So XOM can't give XML Base the same treatment it does namespaces.
--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo AT metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
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|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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