Re: [xml] libxml2 and default namespaces

[Paul Boddie <paul boddie org uk>]

On Sunday 11 December 2005 01:34, Rob Richards wrote:
> Daniel Veillard wrote:
> > DOM is irrelevant, what matters is XML. Libxml2 does not implement DOM.
> > If you're discussing about whether an API allows somthings in a memory
> > tree, then that's not XML, it's irrelevant. If you are discussing about
> > how an instance looks like, then XML is a normative prose which tells
> > what is flawed and what is not.
> >
> > Your example had a serialization without the xmlns, so there is no
> > namespace from an XML perspective. Anything else is discussions about
> > implementations, are implementation specific and not normative from my
> > point of view.
>
> I'm want to add this comment from my perspective and leave this thread
> at that not to keep this going.

I don't want to pollute this list with discussions that are probably more 
relevant to various XML standardisation lists/committees. However, my 
intention was just to clarify whether I had the right expectations in using 
the libxml2 API and in the resulting serialisation. (As I may have said, I 
believe libxml2 is doing the right thing here.)

>  From my POV, if you build a document using DOM (or however you want to
> do it) and it doesn't have the same meaning when serialized then
> something is seriously wrong. So, omitting the default namespace when
> serialized produces a different meaning of the document than what was
> built... that is just plain wrong (again my opinion).

Perhaps the real issue is whether a namespace set on an element whose 
qualified name is unprefixed can be discarded in the serialisation. That I 
may have declared the namespace, but since no prefix is specified I haven't 
(according to some interpretations) actually used it, and that the 
information can be legitimately discarded. Such reasoning sounds dubious to 
me, but it wouldn't surprise me if such loopholes existed in the 
specifications.

Paul