[XML-SIG] namespace/localpart tuples (was: Future plans)

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2000 uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com wrote:
>...
> > I've also been thinking that we may want
> > qualified names to be represented as tuples, either
> > 
> >   (namespace name (URI), localpart (element type name), prefix)
> > 
> > or
> > 
> >   (namespace name (URI), localpart (element type name))
> 
> I think it might be more natural to always make it a triple, and simply have 
> '' as the third item when there is no namespace.

At processing time, the prefix that was used is irrelevant. It shouldn't
be preserved.

You could end up in a situation where a client thinks that prefix "should"
be used when regenerating XML output... the problem is that it may
conflict (say, if you combined a couple XML docs) or not be defined in the
(new) output (if you dropped some portion that defined the namespace).

IMO, it is much better to regenerate a new set of prefixes for the set of
namespace URIs that are present in an XML document.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/