Re: IDs - make them case sensitive

B. Tommie Usdin wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod wrote:
> >An ID is a unique NAME of a particular
> >element, just as a GI is the NAME of an element type and entity names
> >NAME entities.
> 
> While this is good prose I'm not at all sure it makes systems sense.
> Perhaps the question is: "should the limitations on the content of the
> names of element types be the same as the limitation on the content of the
> names of particular elements?".
> 
> And it is not at all clear to me that the answer is YES.

My good prose was meant to get people to try to make the differentiation
explicitly. There are several reasons that I think that restrictions on
names of things make life easier, and they all apply as much to IDs as
to other names. They basically come down to ease of designing
applications, ease of integrating systems, ease of delimiting boundaries
and simplicity of rules. I can also see the downside of these
restrictions, but it seems to apply equally well to element type,
attribute and entity names.

If I were going to vote on what construct should be first in line to
have more flexible naming rules, I would vote on entities. It be handy
to be able to name entities like "/pictures/foo.gif". Entities have
external representations that it might be useful to be able to
"duplicate" in the document. IDs are rather arbitrary and "internal" by
definition.

Is there a good argument why IDs should have different naming rules than
GIs, attributes and entities?

 Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 27 June 1997 16:13:33 UTC