Re: moving toward a decision

> Recent discussions in the xml-uri [XU] list suggest that a proposal
> originally made by Joe Kesselman [JK] and then elaborated by others
> [DC] may provide an approach everyone can live with.

Although it should probably be noted that the proposal put forward is
actually different from either of these proposals. In particular
although obviously an edited version of Dan Connolly's example
the answer to Q7 has been changed so that at least now the proposal
is internally consistent (xpath and infoset similarly unspecified
not as previously suggested infoset unspecified and xpath data model
with a specified behaviour).
Joe Kesselman's original suggestion was much closer to "forbid" than
this, I think.

   As it turns out, we have no evidence
   that multiple interoperable implementations implement the
   namespace-uri() function as specified.

This is of course a somewhat distorted gloss on the current situation.
As far as is known all software currently implements the namespace
spec as written (even xpath implementations that might have been
expected to have implemented the xpath implementation).

   The XSL (and XLink? Query) WGs are advised to draft a revision of
   the XPath specification that does not specify the result of the
   namespace-uri() function in the case of a relative URI reference in
   a namespace declaration, and request Proposed Recommendation status
   for the resulting spec.

This might in the end be a way out of this mess, and I agree that
something need be done, can't stall the whole process forever, but it
is a somewhat strange approach for a putative standards making body to
make that given a situation that all known implementations operate in
an inter operable manner that the behaviour should be declared
unspecified.

If the above change is made note that it doesn't only affect the
namespace-uri function, it must also affect all namespace matching
(a far more common operation in xpath). Thus the above wording
is somewhat misleading for those who will be voting.

David

Received on Tuesday, 4 July 2000 18:29:46 UTC