Re: [xml-dev] RE: Namespaces Best Practice

[Rick Jelliffe <ricko@allette.com.au>]

> From: "David Brownell" <david-b@pacbell.net>
 
> For the record:  yeech!
> 
> In every style guide I've ever seen, the guidance for lexical scoping
> mechanisms is to use them to localize information to its most natural
> scope.  Loop-private variables are invisible outside the loop, etc.
> 
> The namespace analogue is evident:  declare prefixes as locally as
> practical.  (There's some wriggle room there, intentionally.)
>  

Probably we developers should try provide different
namespace declaration regimes, as options for when serializing data into XML.

I hacked together an XML Fragment Interchange server last year,
and put on a "bubble down" and "bubble-up"  option on it: the former
put all namespace declarations at the top, the second kept them local.

For example, if someone is cutting and pasting a section of a document,
they should bubble down any higher-level declarations which are needed
to the node being cut. 

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe