XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Regier Avery J <RegierAveryJ AT JohnDeere.com>]

It seems to be lost here that I am not attempting to bind to the null 
namespace. I am attempting to bind a prefix to a non-null namespace that 
currently has no prefix because the document did not specify it with one. 

- Avery

On May 14, 2012, at 3:34 PM, "Michael Kay" <mike AT saxonica.com> wrote:

>> By this statement it seems that I should be able to create an alias 
> for a namespace that currently lacks one. Why make it hard?
> 
> It would be rather nice if we had pure symmetry in namespace bindings, 
> so you could bind the "null" prefix to either a "real" namespace or the 
> "null" namespace, and bind a "real" prefix to either a "real" namespace 
> or the "null" namespace. Unfortunately that isn't the way. Of these four 
> combinations, XML only allows three - it doesn't allow you to bind a 
> real prefix to the null namespace; and XPath 1.0 only allows two - it 
> doesn't allow you to bind a null prefix to a real namespace. XPath 2.0 
> does allow you to bind a null prefix to a real namespace (the "default 
> namespace for elements and types"), but it still doesn't allow the 
> fourth option, a real prefix bound to a null namespace.
> 
> There are a number of reasons for this asymmetry, none of them in my 
> mind very good reasons, but unfortunately there is a lot of emotional 
> baggage associated with namespaces, part of which is the insistence in 
> some quarters that what I call the "null" namespace is not actually a 
> namespace at all, but something quite different. The fact that the 
> engineering would be more convenient if we treated it as a namespace 
> that happens to have no name doesn't carry much weight with those who 
> attach metaphysical significance (aka "semantics") to such matters.
> 
> Michael Kay
> Saxonica
>>> IN general, though, why would you want to do that? Outside of the true 
>>> ugliness of HTML/XHTML, I've never really seen a need for writing one 
>>> expression to apply regardless of namespaces.
>> My immediate use is to translate from a simplified syntax sent over URLs 
>> to transform the document being returned from that URL.  The client is 
>> always giving the path in the namespace associated with the one document 
>> returned.   The service knows what those namespaces are.
>> 
>> I am specifically attempting to implement embed/fields for REST services 
>> as presented in
>> REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Massé
>> (O'Reilly). Copyright 2012 Mark Massé, 978-1-449-31050-9
>> Chapter 6, pp 73-77, "Response Representation Composition"
>> 
>> 
>> I am working through trying to use the new XOM and make all my tests pass 
>> again.  It really threw a spanner in the works.
>> 
>> 
>> Avery J. Regier
>> RegierAveryJ AT JohnDeere.com
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xom-interest-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
>> [mailto:xom-interest-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Elliotte 
>> Rusty Harold
>> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 12:49 PM
>> To: XOM API for Processing XML with Java
>> Subject: Re: [XOM-interest] XOM 1.2.8 released
>> 
>> As Michael surmised, that's a deliberate bug fix. You should no longer
>> need to bind anything to the default namespace.
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> XOM-interest mailing list
> XOM-interest AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/xom-interest