Re: [xml-dev] XPath and a continuous, uniform information space

[John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Uche Ogbuji <uche@ogbuji.net> wrote:

Whether or not you have node identity should depend on the details of a given processing stage, and I think it's bad architecture to have coupling of node identity across processing stages.  I think of node identity it a bit like a C pointer in that regard, or a CPU address register, if you prefer.  I'm surprised such a matter would be relevant to an expression language as opposed to a processing spec.  But then again maybe by "Ftan" you mean some specific processing mechanism associated with Ftan.

The Ftan paper says specifically in the FtanML data model section that a FtanML element is just its name and its attributes (the content value is an attribute named by the empty string).  It's a pure, if compound, value, like a mathematical ordered pair or a complex number, and has no notion of being embedded in a specific context, hence no parent.  This means that it's a no-op to make a copy of a Ftan element, just as it's a no-op to make a copy of 32+45i.

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