On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Bernd Fondermann <[email protected]> wrote: > This example is especially appropriate, as it includes beer:
We like that of course :-) > <?xml version='1.0'?> > <Beers> > <!-- the default namespace inside tables is that of HTML --> > <table xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> > <th><td>Name</td><td>Origin</td><td>Description</td></th> > <tr> > <!-- no default namespace inside table cells --> > <td><brandName xmlns="">Huntsman</brandName></td> > <td><origin xmlns="">Bath, UK</origin></td> > <td> > <details xmlns=""><class>Bitter</class><hop>Fuggles</hop> > <pro>Wonderful hop, light alcohol, good summer beer</pro> > <con>Fragile; excessive variance pub to pub</con> > </details> > </td> > </tr> > </table> > </Beers> > > Now, I'd like to have an API like this: > builder.add("table", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";). > add("th"). > add("tf"). > addText("Name") ... > > and *not* > builder.add("table", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";). > add("th", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";). > add("tf", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";). > addText("Name") ... > > while you'd like it the other way round, right? Yes (of course, you would likely use a constant rather than a string, but that's besides the point here). > Reason for my position: This is straihtforward. You don't redefine java > variables when a new scope opens. You'd just redefine them to > shadow/override the outer scoped variable. > The inner XML elements are not arbitrary. Within a table, you'd expect > td, tr etc. to occur. No need to redefine the namespace. > However, if non-table elements occur, the namespace gets reset explicitly. I'm not sure I follow along perfectly well here. But, I'll attempt to give an example of why I think inheriting the namespace in the XML creation step would be confusing. Let's take the following function that creates <item> elements in a MUC implementation: private XMLElement createItem(XMLElementBuilder builder) { builder.startInnerElement("item"); ... } Now, in MUC, <item> elements can be contained both in the http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user and http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#admin namespaces. Which one would this be in? To find out, I would have to backtrack to code to find out where the parent <x> element is created and see what namespace that is in. I would rather prefer the namespace be explicit. > And I don't think you can get rid of looking up outer namespaces in any > serious implementation. In the second example, where every add() has an > explicit namespace declaration, one would > * either repeatedly render the declared xmlns on every element, no > tracking of outer ns needed > * or, not repeat rendering the declared xmlns, (like *all* XML examples > I've seen so far) which can only be achieved by keeping track of what > the current namespace is. > > I don't think XML like this: > <table xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> > <th xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> > <td xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Name > ... > would be very compatible with XMPP clients. And would put much more > bytes on the wire than neccessary. Oh, no one is saying this is the XML we should render, and nor do we currently. Instead, the renderer keeps a stack of the default namespaces and only outputs the xmlns attribute when needed. This is the same as the "renderers" (most APIs use the term "writer") does in the other previously mentioned APIs. /niklas
