Re: [xml-dev] Concerned about the increasing reliance on XPath

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

> Here is an example fragment
>
> <a xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"; version-id="0.4"
>      xmlns="http://example.com";>
> ...
>
> In XPath 1.0
> /default:a/@version-id = 0.4 returns true
> but  /a/@version-id = 0.4 returns false
>
> In XPath 2.0
> /default:a/@version-id = 0.4 returns an error (prefix not bound)
> and  /a/@version-id = 0.4 returns true
>
> (I tried these out in Oxygen and I trust the results)
>

These results are entirely attributable to the way in which oXygen 
defaults the parameters controlling XPath evaluation (in particular the 
namespace bindings), and not to the XPath specification itself. See:

http://www.oxygenxml.com/forum/topic1538.html

They could have chosen to make the bindings compatible between the two 
versions, but they chose instead to take advantage of new features in 
the language.

You're right of course that namespaces are far and away the number one 
usability problem in XPath for the majority of users, especially casual 
users.

Michael Kay
Saxonica