Re: [xsl] xmlns in the root element prevents transformation

["Dimitre Novatchev dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  Global declarations at the top of the file would have addressed the
overwhelming majority of cases.

Perhaps it is still not too-late to have a new version of XML/XMLNamespaces
that introduces this? Compatibility can be fully achieved by sensible
defaults.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 3:30 AM Norman Tovey-Walsh ndw@xxxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> With a little trepidation, Ibm going to wade into this threadb&
>
> The first observation Ibll make is that there are other languages that
> allow local names to be in a default namespace. They donbt call them
> namespaces and they donbt work *exactly* the same way, but you donbt
> have to fully qualify every class and method name in, for example, Java
> and Python, because you can import a package and then use its names in
> an unqualified fashion.
>
>   Widget x = new Widget()
>
> is as meaningless cut-and-pasted out of my Java program and pasted into
> yours as
>
>   <widget>X</widget>
>
> I donbt know if itbs the fact that lots of successful XML developers
> donbt think of themselves as programmers that exacerbates the problem.
>
> Itbs unclear if the overlapping-global-namespaces problem that would
> exist if there were no namespaces (and the kludgy, ad hoc solutions that
> would have been developed to deal with them) would be better than
> namespaces or not.
>
> Damian Morris damian@xxxxxxxxxxx <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> writes:
> > I will say that XPath not having support for default namespaces was,
> > perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight and in retrospect, without
> > casting aspersions and with all the best will in the world, looking
> > backwards for just a moment, as an aside and just to shoot the breeze
> > for a minute, a mistake :)
>
> Nope. I totally disagree. I point as evidence to XQuery which totally
> borked things by allowing the in-scope default namespace to apply to
> unqualified names in XPath expressions. Consider:
>
>   let $x := doc("mydoc.xml")/*
>   return
>     <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
>          class="$x/classprop">
>       { $x/path/to/thing/string() }
>     </div>
>
> That completely doesnbt work (unless mydoc happens to be in the XHTML
> namespace, of course).
>
> I canbt count, and would prefer not to consider, the number of places in
> my XQuery code where Ibve been forced into the most awkward contortions
> in order to get expressions evaluated *outside* the context where I need
> them just because the [expletive deleted] default namespace declaration
> [expletive deleted] my XPath expression.
>
> The XSLT rule that says an unqualified name in an XPath expression is in
> no namespace regardless of the in-scope namespaces is exactly correct.
> It doesnbt bother me that you can override that with a declaration, I
> just wouldnbt ever do that.
>
> > On 24 Jul 2020, at 4:54 pm, Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:
> mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Sadly, I can't find my first comment on the draft namespaces spec,
> > which was to the effect of "this is horrible, but it hardly matters,
> > because it's so horrible that no-one will use it". I was right on the
> > first point, and very badly wrong on the second.
>
> Itbs a shame that XML was forced to adopt a weird, pseudo-attribute
> based namespaces design that introduces all sorts of scoping complexity.
> It was done, as I recall, because the folks doing RDF/XML had already
> made some really weird decisions about the semantics of RDF/XML and XML
> namespaces were damned well going to fall in line. Global declarations
> at the top of the file would have addressed the overwhelming majority of
> cases.
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>
> --
> Norman Tovey-Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx>
> https://nwalsh.com/
>
> > Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible
> > exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.--Douglas Adams