well-known namespace prefixes

I don't know if this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but I find the
description of the five predefined namespace prefixes in the main XQuery 1.0
document [1] a bit confusing. In particular, the wording "This document uses
the following predefined namespace prefixes" is potentially misleading -- at
least it was for me the first time I encountered it -- in that the phrase
"This document uses ..." seems to imply that the prefixes are being used in
the specification document for pedagogic purposes only, while in fact the
prefix-uri associations are normative (ie, they're "well-known" and can be
used in queries w/out requiring the user to declare them in the prolog
first).

I haven't found any other clear, unambigous statement in any of the XQuery
documents that these five default associations are normative (tho there's at
least one related mention in the F&O document [2] for three of them);
possibly this is a good place to do so. Rather than saying "This document
uses ...", how about a less amibiguous statement such as, "The following
predefined namespace prefixes are "well-known" and can be used in queries
without declaring them explicitly in the prolog" or some such.

Lastly, just out of curiosity, are these default associations considered
examples of "statically known namespaces" in the static context [3]?

Howard

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/#id-basics

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#namespace-prefixes (note that
"defalt" is misspelled in the text)

[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/#dt-static-namespaces

Received on Tuesday, 27 July 2004 19:43:19 UTC