RE: [xsl] Trouble with namespaces and running identity transform on XHTML

["Michael Kay" <mhk@xxxxxxxxx>]

There is a problem generating XHTML, or any other XML format that requires
specific prefixes to be declared. The XSLT 2.0 spec acknowledges this with a
fudge, simply pointing out that if the result tree is going to be serialized
as XHTML then it's a good idea for the namespace fixup process to take this
into account when allocating prefixes. XSLT 1.0 gives you no guarantees
about the prefixes used in the output and therefore no reliable and portable
way of generating XHTML that validates against the XHTML DTD. In practice
it's usually not a problem because most XSLT processors take the path of
least resistance.

Michael Kay

# -----Original Message-----
# From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-xsl-
# list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James J. Ramsey
# Sent: 10 March 2004 22:23
# To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# Subject: Re: [xsl] Trouble with namespaces and running identity transform
# on XHTML
# 
# 
# --- Kevin Jones <kjones@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
# >
# > > Having an explicitly declared namespace attribute
# > in
# > > xsl:element works in xsltproc, Saxon, and Xalan,
# > but
# > > not Sablotron, which outputs
# > >
# > > <ns_1:html
# > xmlns:ns_1="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
# > > <ns_2:head
# > xmlns:ns_2="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
# > > --snip--
# > > </ns_2:head>
# > > </ns_1:html>
# > >
# >
# > On Sablotron you can get better output by including
# > a prefix in
# > the xsl:element name attribute. Like this,
# >
# > <xsl:element name="{concat('h:',local-name())}"
# > 	namespace="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
# > 	<xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" />
# > </xsl:element>
# 
# except in the output, that prefixes elements with
# "h:", which I do *not* want.
# 
# Anyway, what I'm not sure of is whether the XSLT spec
# guarantees that
# 
# <xsl:element name="NCName"> <!-- No prefix in NCName
# -->
#  <!-- Content of NCName . . . -->
# </xsl:element>
# 
# will result in an element with the unprefixed name
# NCName in the default namespace, or if it's just that
# XSLT processors happen to serialize that as "<NCName>
# . . . </NCName>".
# 
# 
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