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   RE: [xml-dev] Finally, what if namespaces == document types ?

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The case of all programs that process XML documents at the lexical level,
just seeing them as a tree of elements without , is particular. Such
programs are validators, XML editors, XSLT engines (but not XSLT
stylesheets), etc. You, Simon, are  fit to talk about such programs because
you wrote quite a few programs that work at this level (the ones you give as
examples).

Don't get me wrong, it's not because they work at the lexical level that
they are not interesting, indeed they are at the core of a lot of handy
tools nowadays. But I think that a lot of end-user applications (i.e. not
tools) need to work at the semantical level, and need to follow some tree
patterns to process the documents in a sensible way. Most
business-to-business documents fall into that category ; presentation
languages such as XHTML and XSL:FO too. Etc. etc.

So let us say once for all that yes, there are applications that process XML
at the lexical level, but that for these applications there is no big
problems about schemas, namespaces and al. There are such problems for
applications that work at the semantical level, that's what we are focusing
on in this series of threads.

Best regards,
Nicolas

>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
>Envoyé : mardi 22 janvier 2002 01:19
>À : Clark C . Evans
>Cc : xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>Objet : Re: [xml-dev] Finally, what if namespaces == document types ?
>
>
>On Mon, 2002-01-21 at 18:24, Clark C . Evans wrote:
>>  It seems that a 
>> schema wants to give a fixed interpretation for an element; however,
>> the meaning of an element most certainly depends upon its context.
>
>That's certainly not always true.  I won't go so far as to say it's
>never true, but I've certainly designed the rules files for Regular
>Fragmentations, my Namespace filters, and Gorille so that the elements
>can work whatever the XML context.  
>
>Mixing them up to create collections of rules was all I had in 
>mind, and
>context among elements in the same namespace matters, but you 
>could drop
>them into documents containing other namespaces or insert extra content
>and my processors certainly wouldn't notice.
>
>Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.  I can't say schemas help
>either way.
>
>-- 
>Simon St.Laurent
>Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
>Errors, errors, all fall down!
>http://simonstl.com
>
>
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