namespace context of XPointer?

I just read this again:

	"The set of namespace declarations in scope for the expression. If the
	XPointer occurs in an XML document, the namespace declarations in its
	evaluation context must be initialized to the namespace declarations
	currently in scope for the XPointer."
	-- http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-xptr-19991206

I don't understand that. First, grammatically, it's awkward: it
says "if the XPointer occurs in an XML document, ..."; that's vacuously
true of every XPointer; for every XPointer xp, there is an
XML document d such that xp occurs in d:

	<aDoc>...xp here...</aDoc>

I think you mean that given:

	<aDoc xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
		<aref ref="#xpointer(//xh:address)">...</aref>
	</aDoc>

the context should include a (xh, http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml) binding.

Does this also apply to the case of an xpointer in something
besides a URI reference in an attribute value? what if it's just
in the content:

	<aDoc xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
		<aref>xpointer(//xh:address)</aref>
	</aDoc>

And in either case, do you expect that context to travel around
magically
with an xpointer when, for example, it's copied into a desktop
clipboard?
This doesn't make much sense.

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Monday, 20 March 2000 19:05:49 UTC