[Bug 5003] Applicability of <alternative> element to xml:lang

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5003





------- Comment #22 from mike@saxonica.com  2008-02-04 19:37 -------
I wonder if I can put forward another suggestion: parameterized validation.
Currently we say that the validity and type of an element depend only on (a)
the content of the subtree rooted at that element, and (b) the input conditions
for the validation, such as an optional element declaration and type. One way
forward might be to allow additional parameters to the validation, and to allow
these parameters to be referenced as XPath variables in expressions such as the
alternative and assertion expressions. Such parameters could be externally
defined by the agent invoking the validation episode, or they could be bound
during the validation of some containing tree. So $language might be such a
parameter, and it might be set either by the user invoking the validation with
$language=de, or it might be set by the appearance of xml:lang="de" on some
containing element.

There would seem to be many potential use cases for this facility. For example,
I often cite the case of a document in a workflow where the criteria for
passing on to the next stage become increasingly strict as the workflow
proceeds. One could represent this by a validation parameter "stage", and
assess whether the document is "valid given stage=3".

This sounds rather beyond the scope of 1.1, but it feels to me like an
interesting way forward.

Received on Monday, 4 February 2008 19:37:23 UTC