xml-dev - Re: fixing (just) namespaces and validation

[Philip Nye <philipnye@freenet.co.uk>]

james anderson wrote:
...
> > So, to validate with namespaces, you either have to pre-process the
> > document instance to normalise the prefixes to the prefix used in the
> > DTD,
> 
> No, the processing happens in the course of parsing. There is no need for an
> additional pass. No, it is better to map them all to a symbol associated with
> the universal name. The prefixes are superfluous.

Conceptually this is still pre-processing, even if the two are
integrated in a
single pass.

If you are going to use the DTD at all, there is pre-processing to be
done - transforming namespace references into a normalised prefix - and
then there is post-processing - using the namespace to apply semantics
of some sort to
the document.

This means that in David Megginson's layered model, the document bounces
up and down between layers in an inelegant and to my mind very wasteful
way, during the course of its processing. This is a result of the
inflexibility of the DTD or perhaps of the incompatibility of
namespaces.

Either way Simon St.Laurent's original point will not go away. There is
an incompatibility between DTDs and namespaces. To my mind these are
orthogonal concepts and should not interfere with each other.

Either DTDs change, or namespaces change, or you don't use them both or
you put up with this sort of inelegant processing.

Philip Nye
Engineering Arts


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