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Subject: XPath addresses prepared for UBL 1.0 Draft 5


Hi all!

I knew this would be of interest to FPSC and thought it might be of 
interest to LCSC and NDRSC so I've posted it once to the main list as a 
cross posting.

I've prepared the internal FSPC "XPath files" that we use as raw material 
for the production of our formatting specifications.  We don't publish 
these as part of our deliverable.  They've only been internal to FPSC in 
the past but I've wondered the past couple of months if other groups might 
find these reports of use.  Some of you may have seen my presentation in 
Philadelphia at XML 2003 of the case study of the writing of formatting 
specifications (guess what: I used UBL!) and I am reprising this in 
Amsterdam at XML Europe 2004 ... I had some questions about the utility of 
these XPath files.

The question was: since we have XSD files, why bother with XPath 
files?  The answer is that with XPath files you have absolutely every 
possible element and attribute (without any issues of cardinality or model 
constraints) enumerated without having to flip back and forth and read the 
(very!) opaque XSD specifications of parent/sibling/child 
relationships.  Sometimes a quick glance at my XPath file will reveal a 
"what the heck is that doing there?!?!" diagnostic.  To tell you the truth, 
I haven't looked a lot at the UBL XSD files because I have my XPath files 
to give me all the information I need to write formatting specifications 
and stylesheets.

So, these documents enumerate the XPath expression for every possible 
element and attribute in each of the eight document types.  We need them in 
FPSC to unambiguously identify each element in each report of "what goes 
where" on a piece of paper.

But ... I wondered if a quick perusal by LCSC and NDRSC members might find 
such a report a good diagnostic of "what the heck is that doing there?!?!"

The following are very length HTML pages that may exceed the memory limits 
of some machines, so be careful using them ... note that when using IE the 
act of clicking on a given XPath address will copy that address to the 
clipboard (does anyone know the API to Netscape for the clipboard?):

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/5608/UBL-XPath-html-1.0-draft-5.zip

The following are simple text pages that have the same information but no 
"clicking smarts" found in the HTML pages ... any text editor should be 
able to open these files and you can use cut and paste by hand to transfer 
the information:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/5607/UBL-XPath-text-1.0-draft-5.zip

The following are raw files used in creating the above two reports and some 
diagnostics (pathologically complete instances) for XSLT stylesheets:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/5606/UBL-XPath-xml-1.0-draft-5.zip

I hope you find these internal back-room files useful.

.................... Ken

p.s. on the professional side at Crane Softwrights I've actually formalized 
this methodology as a service differentiator when trying to land contracts 
to write stylesheets ... and as I reported in Philadelphia, it has been 
well received by customers and has smoothed the process of satisfying their 
requirements without me having to understand their schemas in any detail

--
Public courses: Spring 2004 world tour of hands-on XSL instruction
Each week:   Monday-Wednesday: XSLT/XPath; Thursday-Friday: XSL-FO
United States: Washington, DC March 15; San Francisco, CA March 22
Finland April 26; Hong Kong May 17; Germany May 24; London June 07
World-wide on-site corporate, government & user group XML training

G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Crane Softwrights Ltd.          http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/o/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0    +1(613)489-0999 (F:-0995)
Male Breast Cancer Awareness  http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/o/bc



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