default-xpath-namespace value

Hi,

Section 4.4 (Unprefixed Names in Expressions and Patterns) --
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#unprefixed-qnames -- describes the
[xsl:]default-xpath-namespace attribute and its effect.

Isn't this a bit confusing given that all the other attributes that
have to point to namespaces do so via the namespace prefix? Why should
this one be different?

If the intention is to move to using URIs rather than prefixes (since
such attributes would have better support in XML Schema, perhaps?),
then what about duplicating the present blah-blah-prefix(es)
attributes with blah-blah-namespace(s) attributes, and deprecating the
blah-blah-prefix(es) attributes. That would give more consistency and
therefore be less confusing.

[Personally I think that using prefixes lead to less problems with
mistyping namespace URIs, especially if you're chopping and changing
between default XPath namespaces a lot, but prefixes have their
downsides as well. Consistency is the main thing.]


On an editorial level, I don't think that it's very clear from the
description that the value of the default-xpath-namespace attribute is
a URI. In the middle of the second paragraph it does say:

  "The default namespace URI for such a name is the value of the
   [xsl:]default-xpath-namespace attribute..."

but I think it would be clearer if the first paragraph stated up front
that the value of the [xsl:]default-xpath-namespace attribute is a
URI - instead of saying it is used "to define" the namespace URI, say
that its "value is" the URI of the namespace.

Cheers,

Jeni
---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

Received on Friday, 18 January 2002 13:16:19 UTC