Re: XPointer syntax

Jeff Lansing wrote:
> 
> How  do I point to the string "Valley Center" in the following xml?
> 
> <doc>
>   <text>New <bold>River Valley</bold> Center Shops<text>
> <doc>
> 
> How do I do it without the string-range function, I mean?

I don't think you can do it without string-range.

> Is it:
> xpointer(/doc/text/bold/text()/point()[7]/range-to(...)) ?

No. The XPath
    /doc/text/bold/text()
yields a location-set consisting of the text node whose string-value is
"River Valley", but when you append "/point()", which is an abbreviation of
"/child::point()", you're asking for all the children of that text node that
are points. This might sound like what you want, but in fact, the `child'
axis of a text node is empty. (So the expression yields an empty
location-set, and thus the XPointer has a sub-resource error.)

You're the fourth person to post to this mailing list thinking that there
was (or should be) a straightforward way to address any given point in a
document. I'm fairly sure there isn't one. See
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-linking-comments/2000JulSep/0163.html,
in which I suggest adding a "points" axis to simplify this sort of
construction.

-Michael Dyck