[Wasabi Proposal] XML desktop query language

[Shaun McCance]

On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 13:22 +0100, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I uploaded my first draft of a XML query language proposal for the
> Wasabi desktop search spec.
> 
> The main part is the xml schema:
> http://grillbar.org/wasabi/drafts/wasabi-query.xsd. It contains lots
> of comments. I've set up a wiki page to collect info, feedback, and
> progress on this here:
> http://wiki.freedesktop.org/wiki/WasabiQueryLanguage.
> 
> There's also a few example queries on the wiki page.

Looking just at the examples, you're using what amount to
namespace prefixes in attribute values without declaring
what namespaces those prefixes bind to.  For example:

<request>
  <query>
    <equals>
      <property name="dc:title"/>
      <string caseSensitive="true">The Ugly Duckling</string>
    </equals>
  </query>
</request>

While it's clear to me (a human) that you mean Dublin
Core's "title" property, it's not explicit.  This should
be explicitly listed as:

<request xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  <query>
    <equals>
      <property name="dc:title"/>
      <string caseSensitive="true">The Ugly Duckling</string>
    </equals>
  </query>
</request>

Of course, since "dc:title" is an attribute value, rather
than a tag name, XML parsers won't do anything with it,
so the specification will have to mention explicitly that
the name attribute of property must be interpreted using
the namespace prefixes that are in scope.  W3C has set a
precedent for doing this with XSLT.

I would also recommend giving the entire XML dialect an
XML namespace.

--
Shaun