ORA-XQ-134-B: inconsistent whitespace rules for rules borrowed from other recommendations

• From: Stephen Buxton <Stephen.Buxton@oracle.com>
• Date: 16 Feb 04 13:21:44
• To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
• Cc:
• Message-Id: <200402162121.i1GLLib13022@rgmgw4.us.oracle.com>

SECTION A.1: EBNF
Rule [21] QName is a reference to another recommendation,
"Namespaces in XML", which does not have a notion 
of "ignorable whitespace".  Instead, all permissible whitespace
is explicitly specified using the S non-terminal.  This means
that the EBNF conventions in "Namespaces in XML" is subtly
different from the EBNF conventions in the present document.
An EBNF in XQuery means that whitespace, comments, pragmas and 
must-understand extensions are permitted between successive 
items on the right hand side, whereas an EBNF in "Namespaces
in XML" does not have that convention.  It would be a mistake
for a reader of XQuery to follow the link to "Namespaces in XML"
and try to apply XQuery's whitespace rules to the rule found
at the end of the link.  
I believe the intention is that XQuery's ignorable whitespace
is not permitted on either side of the colon in a QName.
Thus "prefix : localname" is not a valid QName for purposes
of XQuery, just as it is not permitted in a textual XML document.
Also, comments are not permissible on either side of the colon.
Perhaps the way to clarify this is to add a /* ws:explicit */
comment to this rule.  There may be other rules imported from
other recommendations that need attention on this issue as well.
- Steve B.

Received on Monday, 16 February 2004 16:21:48 UTC