Clarification needed on cloning for insertion

[John Boyer]

In bullet 6 of the insert action [1], it states that the origin nodes are cloned.  Step 8 then describes inserting the cloned nodes into the XForms instances.

[1] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.1/index-diff.html#action-insert

The specification assumes that the cloning/inserting will be done in a way that preserves the integrity of the cloned nodes with respect to XML namespaces.  This is based on the statement that XForms is backed by an XPath data model.  However, since many implementations use DOM machinery to implement, it is worth clarifying the difference between simple DOM cloning versus what is actually expected.

For example, suppose you have an origin node E in the following context:  <prototypes xmlns="abc"> <E>hello</E> </prototypes>

Now suppose you insert it into live data as follows:  <livedata xmlns="xyz"> </livedata>

The question has arisen which of the two results is obtained:

A) <livedata xmlns="xyz"> <E>hello</E> </livedata>
B) <livedata xmlns="xyz"> <E xmlns="abc">hello</E> </livedata>

The answer should be choice B, since an element in the XPath data model is defined by its local name plus its namespace URI.

Further it is easier to see that this should be the case for consistency with the following example.

Suppose you have an origin node E in the following context:  <prototypes  xmlns:e="abc"> <e:E>hello</e:E> </prototypes>

Now suppose you insert it into live data as follows:  <livedata xmlns="xyz"> </livedata>

A) <livedata xmlns="xyz"> <e:E>hello</e:E> </livedata>
B) <livedata xmlns="xyz"> <e:E xmlns:e="abc">hello</e:E> </livedata>

It is clear that answer B is correct since answer A, where there is an absence of proper namespace processing in the cloning process, results in an XML well-formedness violation.

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM, Interactive Documents and Web 2.0 Applications
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@...  

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/JohnBoyer?flavor=rssdw