Re: Expanded names are not enough

John Cowan (cowan@locke.ccil.org)
Thu, 06 Aug 1998 16:56:18 -0400


Chris Maden wrote:

> Not true. In this context, foo:p has some universal name (URI + local
> name), depending on the namespace map in effect when the CSS style
> rules appeared or were included. This style rule applies to any
> element with the same universal name, whatever prefix was used to get
> it.

Nope, nope, nope. Consider this:

<STYLE type="text/css">
foo:p {ident 1em}
</STYLE> <!-- or substitute however you like to embed stylesheets -->
<foo:p xmlns:foo="http://some.net/ns-1">
This is a paragraph.
</p>
<foo:p xmlns:foo="http://some.va/ns">
John Paul II
</p>

The CSS stylesheet will blindly style both foo:p's, even though
they are semantically distinct ("paragraph" vs. "pope"), because the
stylesheet is global and the ns prefixes are local.

The only way out is to change the second "foo" to a different
prefixes, making the whole idea of local prefix definition
nugatory.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)