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This is raised in response to some discussion on xml-dev today which points out that the specs are unclear on a significant question. In the status section of the current published working draft we say: "The minimal subset of XPath which processors were required to support for assertions has been eliminated; processors must support all of XPath." But in section 3.13.1 Assertions we say (and this is still in the status quo): "Conforming processors may implement all of [XPath 2.0] or may restrict themselves to the subset described below. Interoperability among all conforming implementations is best achieved by restricting XPath expressions to the subset." Moreover it's not very clear what "below" refers to. The sentence quoted is followed by some very informally-stated rules like "Path steps are restricted to only match information items within the element being ·assessed·." - is that what is meant? These statements look to me like a non-normative description of a subset, not like a normative definition. The only XPath subsets we define are now in sections 3.11 and 3.12, and they are above rather than "below". Michael Kay
Thank you; good catch. I think this is an editorial botch: when we took away the subset from the Assertions section (and moved it to Type Alternatives), this material should have been deleted. Proposal: delete the paragraph beginning "The {test} property specifies an XPath ([XPath 2.0]) expression" and the following list (which provides an informal characterization of the subset that used to be here).
We adopted the proposal in comment #1.
The change suggested in comment 1 is now in the status quo document. Michael, if you would do the honors, please?