declaring a namespace for XML literal, was Re: xquery2src

Hello Molnár,

Hopefully, I will release updated and v1.4.0.3-checked scalax before 
beginning of next week. (I noticed that v1.4.0.4 has a bug appearing 
when mixing in the MarkupReader class which v1.4.0.3 doesn't have ... ).

about the question: I don't recall the exact namespace-declaration 
syntax of XQuery for now, but it should be easy to support this.

Since it might be useful for scala.xml hackers, I'll give some more 
details here.
--
An XML literal <bla:foo ....xmlns:ga="gu">kids</foo> is translated in 
something like this
val $tmp = $scp
{
   val $scp = new NamespaceBinding("ga", "gu", $tmp); // shares the old 
bindings
  Elem("bla","foo", attrs, $scp, kids)
}

(Actually, the namespace business is what makes everything look so ugly, 
blocks, variables...)

The way to declare a namespace mapping from prefix "ga" to URI "gu" 
would thus be something like the following.

declare namespace ga = gu;
(morecode)
==>

val $tmp = $scp
{
   val $scp = new NamespaceBinding("ga", "gu", $tmp); // shares the old 
bindings
   (morecode)
}

The special variable $scp is visible in every program, because it is 
defined in Predef.scala
--

I hope the scalax tools can account for "a relatively painless migration 
path", that was in principle what they were made for.

cheers,
Burak

Molnár Balázs wrote:

> Hello Burak,
>
> The current version of xquery2src does not seem to support namespace  
> declarations (declare namespace ...; ). Do you plan to implement  this 
> ? When do you think you would make available the new Scalax  package ?
>
> The relevance of this is that currently my application ( a financial  
> planner for insurance companies)  is implemented all the way using  
> XSL  and XQuery calculations. My research area at the moment is to  
> find a programming environment which allows the use of my business  
> terms - as opposed to the XML domain specific approach of XSL/XQuery  
> - and supports a relatively painless migration path. XQuery  
> calculations are the first area in my application I would use for  
> benchmarking an alternative architecture.
>
> regards,
> Balazs


--
Burak Emir

http://lamp.epfl.ch/~emir