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"Roots" of confusion introduced at W3C
- To: xsl-list at mulberrytech dot com
- Subject: "Roots" of confusion introduced at W3C
- From: AndrewWatt2000 at aol dot com
- Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:04:37 EDT
- CC: xsl-editors at w3 dot org
- Reply-To: xsl-list at mulberrytech dot com
Given that the confusion about the "root" of an XML document has featured
recently in discussion on the list I thought it might be useful to list
members if I were to try and identify the profusion ... and confusion ... of
terminology used in W3C documents.
The following represents my understanding. If I have misunderstood any part
of this then I would welcome correction.
The following terms are used for the ROOT of the document (of which the
"element root" or "root element" is a child) i.e. these are all different
terms used for the same thing in W3C documents, as I understand it.
XML 1.0 - "document entity" (Section 4.8). The terms "root node" and
"document root" do not occur in the XML 1.0 Recommendation.
In addition XML 1.0 confuses the issue by using the term "document entity"
to, apparently, refer to both the root of the tree (Section 4.8) and also the
whole serialised document.
XML 1.0 further confuses the issue by using the term "root" (with no
qualifier) to refer to the "document element", a child of the "document
entity".
DOM 1.0 - "root node" - makes a reference to XML 1.0 where the term "root
node" is not used (Appendix B)
DOM 1.0 - "Document interface" roughly corresponds to the root node
The term "document root" does not occur in either DOM 1 Recommendation or DOM
2 Candidate Recommendation.
XSLT - "root node" (Section 3.1)
XSLT - "document root" (Section 5.2)
XPath - "root node" (Section 5.1)
XPath - "document root" (Section 2)
XPointer (CR) - introduces the term of "root location" (Section 5.3.3)
SVG (CR) - "root object" (Section 5.10)
The term "root" is used in an unqualified way to refer to what I take to be
the "element root" <svg> (e.g. Section 19.2.2).
Thus, for this foundational concept of the "root" of an XML document we find
multiple terms being, apparently, used for the same thing and certain terms
being used for more than one thing.
I cannot guarantee that I have identified every distinct term used for this
foundational concept. There is certainly cause for concern about this
inconsistent use of terminology within and between W3C documents.
It is unsurprising that there is significant confusion about what constitutes
the "root" of an XML document.
Further confusion is introduced in the 27th March 2000 Working Draft of the
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) specification where the term "root node"
is introduced in a way which is NOT the "root node" as used above (in XPath
and XSLT) but is actually the "root element" or "element root". See, for
example, the reference to the <fo:root> element in Section 6.4.1.
I would firmly suggest that the W3C needs to give some attention to this
problem and introduce some consistency in terminology between W3C documents.
Andrew Watt
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