comments on the XML Canonical specification

On reading the XML Canonical spcification, I have some comments and
concerns, which I think should be addressed.

1) 'However, the statement in Namespaces in XML that "the prefix
functions only as a placeholder for a namespace name" is only true in
the limited context of the Namespaces in XML Recommendation.'

This is not true; although some specifications do not follow this,
others do. There are several DOM applications which treat the prefix as
"syntactic sugar"; it is only important for serialization and may be
changed at that stage. DOM Level 2 makes no attempt to make sure
prefixes match namespace URIs, for example, and there are DOM
applications which don't ever assign prefixes, because the XML is never
serialized. Several people are of the opinion that the Namespaces
Recommendation is correct in this regard, and those specifications which
differ are incorrect. So I would recommend that the language in the
canonicalization specification be chosen carefully.

2) 'The XPath data model expects the XML processor to convert relative
URIs to absolute URIs.'

This is an errata in the XPath specification, which will be fixed. See
the Hypertext Coordination Group archives. 

Lauren Wood

Received on Monday, 11 September 2000 14:00:52 UTC