[XQuery ] doc. order of attribute nodes created in element constructor

L.S.,

Can the implementation of a computed elemement constructor freely choose 
the order of the attribute nodes? For example, is the result of

  element { "a" } { attribute { "b" } { "" }, attribute { "c" } { "" } }

always

   <a b="" c=""/>

or can it also be

   <a c="" b=""/>

? I would expect the latter for fundamental (attributes are essentially 
unordered) and practical reasons (letting the implementation choose a 
certain ordering my sometimes make certain operations more efficient), 
but It's not clear to me what the informal and formal semantics exactly 
have to say about this.

I already raised a related point before (the document order of the 
contents of an element created with a computed element constructor seems 
underspecified) but am not sure about the follow-up, so if this has 
already been discussed I apologize.

-- Jan Hidders

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Received on Monday, 2 February 2004 09:53:20 UTC