Marcus Bristav wrote:
> On 8/4/06, Eric Armstrong <Eric.Armstrong / sun.com> wrote:
>>
>> I continue to be disgruntled by a syntax that ignores
>> the context you specified, unless you add the additional
>> "." to say, "No, I really mean it". But I thank you for
>> a fine solution, and the additional explanation.
> 
> I suppose this is because XPath originated from XSLT.  When using XPath in
> XSLT you always have, implicitly, the current node as the context node.
> Sometimes you need to break out of the context and then you do it by
> appending a "/" or a "//" in the beginning of your path expression to 
> search
> from the root. XPath works extremely smooth in most ways in XSLT.
> 
> But from a DOM and XPath perspective it's kind of silly...
> 
That XSLT perspective may explain it, somewhat.
Thanks for the attempt to make it seem rational, at least.
\:_)