[Bug 3778] 3.7.1.2: description for xmlns/xml is contradictory

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=3778


chamberl@almaden.ibm.com changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED




------- Comment #2 from chamberl@almaden.ibm.com  2006-10-02 16:35 -------
I see no ambiguity here. Let A be the proposition "A namespace declaration
attribute binds a namespace URI to the prefix xml or xmlns." Let B the the
proposition "A namespace declaration attribute binds a prefix other than xml to
the namespace URI http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace." In terms of these
propositions, the XQuery spec currently says "It is a static error [XQST0070]
if A or B."

The query in your example satisfies proposition A but not proposition B.
Therefore it is a static error. Saxon 8.8J raises [XQST0070], which is the
correct behavior. XQTS does not test this behavior, which is not surprising
because this is an exceedingly obscure case that provides no useful
functionality. If some system fails to raise [XQST0070] when a query rebinds
the prefix xml to the URI that it is already bound to, I don't think anybody
will care.

I think the current design is correct because it allows implementations to
raise an error on any binding of "xml", without the burden of checking what the
prefix is bound to. No useful functionality is compromised by this design, and
the design is clearly and unambiguously specified in the current document. I do
not see a reason to change anything here.

Regards,
Don Chamberlin (personal response)

Received on Monday, 2 October 2006 16:35:30 UTC