Request for new namespace capabilities in "any" element

I have encountered a scenario where a new capability of the "any"
"namespace" attribute would be helpful. 

Briefly, I have a situation where a type in namespace "ns1" defines several
elements plus an "any" element with namespace="##other" and minOccurs="0"
and maxOccurs="unbounded".

That type is then redefined and restricted, adding specific elements from
another namespace, "ns2". Since the "any" element is there, adding the
elements from another namespace appears to be a legal restriction of the
unbounded any. (XSV, Xerces, and XML Spy seem to recognize this correctly,
and reject the addition of elements from ns1 or with undefined namespace
prefixes).

Trouble is, I'd like to leave the "any" in the redefined type definition
(at the end), and to have it exclude both the original namespace ns1 (as per
the original "##other") *and* the new namespace "ns2". Since the context is
a redefine, the ##other still pertains to the original namespace ns1. But
that leads to a non-determinism, since the parser can't tell if the new
content from "ns2" should match the newly added elements or the any.

What would seem to work here would be an "any" "namespace" value that would
call out specific namespaces *to exclude*, such as   

	<xs:any namespace="##exclude ns1 ns2 ns3"/>

This would help to prevent nondeterminism problems "down the chain" of
possible redefinitions since, at any given redefinition step, the redefining
file would know the namespaces encountered thus far (and to be excluded down
the chain).

Is this something that might be worth considering for a future release?

Thanks,

Mark



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Mark Feblowitz                                   [t] 617.715.7231
Frictionless Commerce Incorporated     [f] 617.495.0188 
XML Architect                                     [e]
mfeblowitz@frictionless.com
400 Technology Square, 9th Floor 
Cambridge, MA 02139 
www.frictionless.com

Received on Friday, 7 December 2001 12:33:39 UTC