Re: [Sax-devel] SAX and xmlns attributes

The XML Core WG has considered your comments on the assignment
of the namespace name http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/ to the xmlns
prefix.

This assignment was made in Febraury 2000 following representations
from the DOM WG.  It was reflected in the XML Infoset Spec published
in October 2001.  So it is not a new decision, and its incorporation
as an erratum in the Namespaces spec is just a recognition of a
long-standing decision.

We appreciate that this is not consistent with the way SAX identifies
namespace attributes, and that SAX's behaviour is consistent with the
unamended spec.  However we do not believe that reversing a decision
made in February 2000 would achieve anything except further confusion.

We note that the Namespaces spec does not impose any conformance
constraints on processors, and therefore this erratum should not be
taken as implying in any way that SAX is not conformant.

-- Richard Tobin, on behalf of the XML Core WG

Received on Monday, 22 July 2002 11:29:03 UTC