Re: Extend values of type ID

Anne van Kesteren wrote:

> It would make much more sense, in my humble opinion, to make allow any
> character as value with a minimum length of 1 character. With the
> exclusion of some control characters I guess.


ID values are considered to be names. These are the same rules as for 
XML names. Why it was decided to make them names instead of name tokens 
I'm not sure. However, allowing arbitrary strings would cause lots of 
problems with white space. many contexts in which IDs would be used 
could not easily deal with values that contain white space, especially 
after taking into account the baroque rules for attribute value 
normalization. For instance, it would completely break IDREFS if IDs 
could contain white space.


-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
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