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Simon St.Laurent wrote: > At 02:07 PM 10/27/00 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote: > >We agree. ... (btw: by 'global attribute' do you mean a non namespace > >prefixed attribute?) > > No, they're quite definitely prefixed. > > I'm referring to the discussion in Namespaces in XML, Section A.2: > http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#ns-breakdown I understand. This term was confusing to me because of the overloaded use of the term 'global' with respect to namespaces ... for example a member of the global namespace (in other contexts) is often unprefixed. It seems to me that this sort of language arises because of certain notions concerning the relationship of an attribute to its defining element. There exists a strong desire to make more of the relationship between the attribute and its containing element than actually exists, for example that an attribute is a child of the parent element, or that an attribute inherits the namespace of the element, or that somehow unprefixed attributes have some 'special' relationship with the element. What? (if we go back to the idea of a QName as being a way to prevent name clashes, there's scant justification for this). One of the reasons the term "grove" is used to represent an abstract document, rather than simply a "tree" is that things like the attribute set are attached to but distinct from the parent-child heirarchy. Both the SAX and DOM APIs make no distinction between namespace prefixed and non-prefixed attributes in that they are always in the same set i.e. there is no method el.getGlobalAttributeList() Perhaps I am missing something? Jonathan Borden The Open Healthcare Group http://www.openhealth.org
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