Of base URIs and the current working directory

It turns out that resolving URIs, like this one

<p:load href="somefile.xml"/>

against the base URI of the p:load step is often not what you want.
Often you want to resolve them against the current working directory.

Trouble is, there's no way to tell what the cwd is. I was thinking
about this and implementiong p:resolve-uri() when I realized that this
idiom will return the base URI in the static context:

<p:variable name="cwd" select="p:resolve-uri('.')">
  <p:empty/>
</p:variable>

If we fix the bug I identified[1] in our definition of the static
context, and if we assume that implemetations are likely to use the cwd
as the base URI in the static context, then we likely win.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xml-processing-model-comments/2008Nov/0094.html

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | There might very well be nothing; nor
http://nwalsh.com/            | anyone. No one to notice that there is
                              | nothing, and to consider that natural.
                              | But that there is something, and,
                              | whatever it may be, the strange thing!
                              | I shall never cease being amazed at
                              | this.--André Gide