following/preceding-sibling shorthands in XPath 2.0

I have previously sent a mail about this to the 
www-xpath-comments@w3.org mailinglist, but I was directed here.

The original message is below:

> What about creating shorthands for following-sibling and 
> preceding-sibling in XPath 2.0?
> 
> following-sibling::chapter[fn:position() = 1] could be
> +chapter[1]
> 
> and
> 
> preceding-sibling::chapter[fn:position() = 1] could be
> -chapter[1]
> 
> Neither + or - are legal characters to start an XML element name with, 
> so I think this syntax is possible. Other usage examples would be +[1] 
> and -[1] for +*[1] and -*[1].
> 
> In my company's product we have changed from our own targeting method to 
> XPath (shorthand notation), and this is one thing we're missing. We use 
> these selectors so often that we currently defined our own syntax for it 
> ('~+chapter[1]' and '~-chapter[1]'), but we would prefer to use a 
> standardized method.

I understand from a comment by Michael Kay on the other list that + and 
- are used as unary operator (should have thought of that), so that's a 
no go. Instead, I propose the syntax we have temporarily chosen to use 
in my company:

~+chapter[1]
~-chapter[1]

Although I don't really care what the syntax will exactly be, it would 
be very nice to have a shorthand for this selector available. To quote 
Alex Kodat from the other list: "...it also strikes me as a bit bizarre 
that such important axes don't have an abbreviated syntax."


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!