Re: Parents disinherit their children

[James Clark <jjc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> However, I'm concerned about the logical inconsistency in this
> statement as currently written. In common usage, both technical and
> genealogical, the statement that A is the parent of B clearly implies
> that B is the child of A. Why is this common understanding of
> language broken here?

This was discussed at enormous length in the XSL WG.  It boiled down to
a choice between the design as it is now and an alternative design in
which

1. "parent" is the inverse of "children"
2. there's a new "bearer" axis that gets from an attribute/namespace to
the element that bears it
3. there's a new "parent-or-bearer" axis that means what parent means
now
4. .. is an abbreviation for parent-or-bearer::node()

The WG decided to stick with the current design because

a) the alternate design added significant complexity (two new axes)
without any increased functionality

b) it complicates usage of ancestor. Either

- ancestor on an attribute is always empty, or
- you introduce new axes that are like ancestor/ancestor-or-self but
work for attributes, or
- you make ancestor no longer equivalent to parent or parent's parent
etc

None of these seem attractive options. 

> Is there anything that can be done to fix it?

No.  At this stage, the scope for change is very limited (unless you
want to see the Recommendation delayed for many months).

James



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