Extension elements and namespace prefixes

[Denys Duchier <Denys.Duchier@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been playing with the new release of XT which I think is
wonderful (thank you James).  While adapting my own output handler to
work with the new implementation I discovered a `problem' that had
escaped my attention before:

	the name of the element passed to methods startElement and
        endElement contain the namespace prefix if it wasn't null.

previously I always had a null prefix in such cases which is probably
why I never noticed the problem.  The reason for passing a prefixed
name of course is that this is what is mandated by SAX.  However it
seems to me that this doesn't make sense for extension elements since
the prefix is chosen by the stylesheet not by the implementation of
the extension.  Thus a robust implementation must strip off the prefix
(btw, this is not done by XT's output handlers, which means that if
they are invoked with an arbitrary prefix they don't work - at least
the NXML output handler has this problem).  At the moment, I simply
look for a `:' in order to strip a prefix if any.  My question is: is
this the correct way to recognize a prefix?  Is the namespace
separator guaranteed to always be a colon?

Thanks,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list