Re: 4. ID assignment and the empty string

> XML does not, as far as I can tell, require that the UA treat the <p> 
> element as having an ID of "". (In fact, XML does not seem to require 
> processors to recognise or process IDs at all, except for correctness 
> checking in validating parsers.) Could you point me to where in the XML 
> specification there is that requirement?

It is true that the XML specification does not require the processor
to report attribute types at all.  But the [attribute type] property
in the Infoset spec is set to the declared type regardless of the
validity of the value.  So the p element's id attribute has an
[attribute type] of ID and a [normalized value] of "".

I am opposed to any change which makes the type of an attribute depend
on anything other than its name.  Our APIs return element names and
attribute names and types by returning an object corresponding to the
declaration along with the value.  This makes it impossible to return
different types for attributes with the same name.  Apart from the
usual difficulties of changing APIs, changing them would defeat the
aim of allowing existing applications to understand xml:id simply by
upgrading to the latest version of the parser.

-- Richard

Received on Wednesday, 26 January 2005 15:38:26 UTC