ISSUE-13

mixedNamespaceMeaning-13

What is the meaning of a document composed of content inmixed namespaces?

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Raised by:

Tim Berners-Lee

Opened on:

2002-04-22

Description:

This was raised in the light of lack of consensus result from the workshop, and specifically prompted by a question, occurring as XEncryption made its way to Candidate Recommendation status in W3C, about the relationship of XEncryption to other specs, and TAG discussion of XSLT "templates" as an apparent corner case in XML processing.

Second issue: namespace-based dispatching. From TAG draft finding on issues *-{1,2,3}, the following draft text was removed for discussion as part of this issue:

When processing XML documents, it is appropriate for Web applications to dispatch elements to modules for processing based on the namespace of the element type.

Correct dispatching and processing requires context - in general it is not reasonable nor safe to do namespace-based processing without knowledge of the namespace of ancestor elements. Because of this, the namespace of the root element of an XML document has special status and serves naturally as a basis for top-level software dispatching in the case where the dispatch information is not externally supplied.

It is acknowledged that there are exceptions to this rule, for example XSLT documents whose root element's namespace depends on the desired output from application of the XSLT.

It should be noticed that in the case of certain sort of element including some in XSLT, XInclude, XEncryption namespaces, that a system conforming to the specification will regcognize them at any point in a document and elaborate them in place, typically producing more XML which replaces the element instance in the tree.
 

Related Actions Items:

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Related emails:

1. TAG Weekly Teleconference (from on 2005-04-05)
2. Minutes of 9 February 2004 TAG Videoconference (from on 2004-02-09)
3. Minutes of 6-7 Feb 2003 TAG ftf meeting (from on 2003-02-06)
4. Minutes of 6-7 Feb 2003 TAG ftf meeting (from on 2003-02-06)
5. Minutes of 24-25 Sep 2002 TAG ftf meeting (from on 2002-09-25)
6. TAG F2F 5th May 2002 (from on 2002-05-05)
7. Summary of 2002-04-22 TAG teleconference (from on 2002-04-22)
8. Summary of 2002-04-22 TAG teleconference (from on 2002-04-22)
9. Summary of 2002-04-22 TAG teleconference (from on 2002-04-22)
10. Summary of 11 March 2002 TAG teleconf (from Ian B. Jacobs on 2002-03-11)

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