[jdom-interest] newbie question

[Laurent Bihanic]

bob mcwhirter wrote:
> That seems like a massive mis-use of namespaces and prefix bindings.
> 
> The prefixes in an XPath are in no way related to the prefixes used in 
> a document.  The theory is that a user should be able to write:
> 
> 	.//goober:bar
> 
> and denote that "goober" maps to "urn:xyz:abc" and still select the
> correct nodes from the document, regardless of the doc's own prefix->uri
> mappings.

As a programmer, I agree with you. Now, imagine a user typing an XPath 
expression after having selected a node or, in a script written in XML, as the 
value of an attribute of a node. How would you expect the guy to understand 
you do not automatically recognize the namespace prefix defined 2 nodes higher 
up in the hierarchy ?
Maybe this is a very specific use-case but it is truly a case where one needs 
automatic namespace resolution. Hence the NamespaceContext implementation.
And adding to the XPath object all the namespaces declared from the node up to 
the document root is quite cumbersome.

> Would an ignoreNamespaces(boolean) satisfy your needs better?

No, I'm fine with namespaces. I just need to provide a user-friendly way to 
deal with them.

Laurent