xml-dev - Re: XML-Schemas: purpose of elementFormDefault?

[ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)]

johns@syscore.com (John F. Schlesinger) writes:

> Henry wrote:
> "There are clearly problems with (1), for instance because it means that
> changing from a local to a global declaration for an element will have an
> impact on the appearance of valid instances;"
> 
> Does this mean that it is not necessary to prefix the global elements in the
> schema? If I have to prefix the global elements in the schema but not the
> local elements, then changing the schema would change the form of an
> instance.
> 
> In any case, am I required to prefix the root element of my document (where
> I define the default namespace to be the schema's target namespace)? Or will
> the validating parser recognize that even the root element is in the default
> namespace? Using Roger's schema, is this then a valid instance (it is the
> same as Roger's except that I declare a default namespace and remove the
> qualification)?
> 
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <BookCatalogue
>   xmlns="http://www.publishing.org/namespaces/BookCatalogue"
>   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
>   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.publishing.org/namespaces/BookCatalogue
>                      BookCatalogue2.xsd">
>   <Book>
>      <Title>My Life and Times</Title>
>      <Author>Paul McCartney</Author>
>      <Date>1998</Date>
>      <ISBN>94303-12021-43892</ISBN>
>      <Publisher>McMillin Publishing</Publisher>
>   </Book>
>   ...
> </BookCatalogue>
> 
> This is what I would like to be able to do so that poor developers that
> create instances of my schema don't have to worry about namespaces, which
> they don't understand (any more than I do).

This is fine _if and only if_ form='qualified' for <Book>, <Title>,
etc. (or elementFormDefault='qualified') in the schema.  Why?  Because
locally declared elements must be _unqualified_ in instances, and by
using the default namespace declaration, you've qualified all those
names.

You use 'prefixed' in your discussion above, but that's _not_ the
right way to approach this:  elements in instances can be qualified
without being prefixed (although attributes cannot :-(.  All the
elements in your version of the example are qualified, because of the
default namespace declaration, which does indeed apply to
<BookCatalogue>, the document element.

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
     2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
	    Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
		     URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/

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