Re: [WD XHTML 2.0] usemap attribute

> Actually this is under (re)consideration.  It was a URI in HTML 4 and
> XHTML 1.0, but was changed to IDREF in Modularaization of XHTML (and
> hence in XHTML 1.1) as
> implementation experience has showed that
> support for external map reference is very weak

This should not be relevant for a spec that is not intended to be backwards
compatible. For image maps that are used on multiple pages, a URI reference
is the most logical way to accomplish this. Why force authors to use
server-side includes when setting this type as a URI would work?

> and has a lot of difficulties in implementing it.
Such as what? I could forsee some overhead in loading subsequent pages if
the map were not cached, but that strikes me as easily solved.