[jdom-interest] Default Namespace vs No-Namespace.

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 11:02 AM -0700 7/3/03, John Jefferson wrote:

>Maybe you can enlighten me on this point.  Or point me
>to something easier to digest than the xml namespace
>spec.

I recommend the namespaces chapters in my own XML in a Nutshell or 
the XML Bible, 2nd Edition. Or see 
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava/chapters/ch01s02.html#d0e1273 
online, though it's not as complete.

>Alright how can I, without iterating through all nodes
>in the document, set the root element to have a
>default namespace and have that namespace propogate
>down to all children nodes which are not already
>namespaced - other than the special no-namespace?

You can't, any more than you can change the name of every element in 
the document without iterating through it. As others have pointed 
out, the namespace of an element is half of its extended name. Each 
element has its own extended name, which is independent of other 
elements in the document.

You are essentially asking for an API that treats namespaces as 
merely artifacts of certain attributes. There have been such APIs, 
notably SAX 1 and DOM 1. Namespace aware APIs such as SAX 2, DOM 2, 
and JDOM have proven in practice much easier to use for documents 
with namespaces.


-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo at metalab.unc.edu
   Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA