Re: Why unqualified? (was RE: ANN: SAX Filters for NamespaceProcessing)

[Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com>]

I agree with Rons analysis. It makes me feel a little bit
less like I am missing something. Many of us on
this list were serializing objects into markup languages
long before namespaces came along!

To reiterate my main objection to namespaces, context and disambiguation
are two different things. Essentially namespace defaulting provide
a model - orthoganal to XML's primary, element based, containership
model - for specifying a *context*. As a result you end up,
not with one context (which is complex enough thanks very
much!) but with N contexts heaped on top of each other.

It is as if the rarely implemented CONCUR feature of SGML
has crept into XML via a back door!

Sean

At 15:49 01/08/2001 -0700, Ronald Bourret wrote:
>Sean McGrath wrote:
> > >The serialization of objects and structures is a real reason.
> >
> > Hmm. Could you give an example?
>
>XML data binding products often generate code for classes from an XML
>Schema or vice versa. If you can have unqualified (or even locally
>defined) children, then generating an XML Schema from a graph of class
>definitions is easy in that you don't have to worry about element name
>collisions.
>
>For example, suppose you have two classes:
>
>class foo        class bar
>{                {
>    int x;           String x;
>    int y;           String y;
>    bar b;        }
>}
>
>The existence of local element types means you can serialize objects
>from these classes as:
>
>    <foo>
>       <x>...</x>
>       <y>...</y>
>       <bar>
>          <x>...</x>
>          <y>...</y>
>       </bar>
>    </foo>
>
>The problem with local element types is that, once an element of the
>type is taken out of its containing element, it can't be identified.
>Allowing the child element names to be unqualified just exacerbates
>(sp?) the problem.
>
>What I can't understand about both is whether they solve any technical
>problems. As far as I can tell, the only problems they solve are
>aesthetic, since the objects could just as easily have been serialized
>as:
>
>    <foo>
>       <foo-x>...</foo-x>
>       <foo-y>...</foo-y>
>       <bar>
>          <bar-x>...</bar-x>
>          <bar-y>...</bar-y>
>       </bar>
>    </foo>
>
>-- Ron
>
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