Re: SAX Filters for Namespace Processing

[Francis Norton <francis@redrice.com>]

Ronald Bourret wrote:
> 
> Not true. If you transfer the fragment with DOM, the namespace
> information is carried along. This is only true if you transfer the
> fragment with a text editor. As many threads on xml-dev have shown,
> text-based processing of XML is hazardous at best.
> 
Exactly. I believe that this point applies to *any* namespace-aware XML
processing tool, certainly to XSLT and XPath. That's why "unqualified
local elements" doesn't re-interpret namespaces (as I mistakenly
suggested) - it just breaks them, or at least their support for
distinguishing elements from multiple sources. And that's why people
like me who have been going around getting our companies to support W3C
standards like XML, namespaces and XML Schema are now having to go round
saying that, um, actually, we can't safely use this default setting.

Too late to change it now, but may be we can best put it behind us by
agreeing that the default was a mistake, and using best practice guides
as a workround.

And like the patent office which will only issue a patent for a
perpetual motion machine if you accompany the application with a working
instance of the machine, may I suggest that any future attempt to defend
the default be accompanied by a compelling use case?

Francis.