Exclusive XML canonicalization: please check my logic

[Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

The following was reported as a bug in XOM. You have a document like this:

<a xmlns="http://www.example.com";>
   <b:c xmlns:b="http://www.foo.com"/>
</a>

If you use exclusive XML canonicalization to canonicalize just the child 
b:c element, what you expect is:

<b:c xmlns:b="http://www.foo.com";></b:c>

That is, the default namespace does not get pulled in from the parent. 
This does seem to be the critical difference between canonicalization 
and exclusive canonicalization, but the spec is a little technical. I 
think this is the relevant point; "namespace nodes that are not on the 
InclusiveNamespaces PrefixList are expressed only in start tags where 
they are visible and if they are not in effect from an output ancestor 
of that tag.". In this example, the default namespace is not visibly 
utilized and there is no output ancestor. Thus I think there should be 
no default namespace declaration in the exclusive canonicalization, 
though there would be in regular canonicalization. Is this correct?

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Refactoring HTML Just Published!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0321503635/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA