Re: ANN: SAX Filters for Namespace Processing

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 31 Jul 2001 12:15:57 +0100, Richard Tobin wrote:
> [Ron Bourret]
> >Instead of trying to impose a technical solution, better to write the
> >author of any schema that uses unqualified child elements an email and
> >explain that they are not writing a portable schema. Bad design is a
> >human problem and is better solved by humans.
> 
> But the use of unqualified child elements (though not Simon's
> equivalence) is explicitly supported by XML Schemas - see
> elementFormDefault.  It is not universally agreed that this is bad
> design.

We have a situation where some see bad design, some see good design, and
developers are going to have to deal with diversity.  While I'd like to
be able to write off the unqualified elements as a bad idea and tell
developers to fix their W3C XML Schemas and software, I don't think
that's going to work.

This is only a technical solution for recipients of such documents
without the power to change the form in which the senders package them.
I'd far prefer to see senders abstain from writing W3C XML
Schemas/documents/software which uses these things, but as that seems
painfully unlikely, I'll settle for this.

Now if someone starts using unqualified names which have the same local
name as a qualified name with a different meaning...  that won't be
fixable this simply.


Simon St.Laurent
Associate Editor
O'Reilly & Associates