Re: xml:base irrelevant to same document reference

Graham Klyne wrote:

> The problematic "same document reference" wording from is proposed to be 
> revised in the forthcoming revision of RFC2396 [1] [2].  With this 
> change, I think that using xml:base is entirely consistent with RFC2396.

Thanks for the pointers.  I see you have been through this issue 
exhaustively, but I have to say I am still left feeling a bit uneasy. 
The revised RFC2396 version still says "When a same-document reference 
is dereferenced for the purpose of a retrieval action, the target of 
that reference is defined to be within that current document or message; 
the dereference should not result in a new retrieval."  Consider the 
following XHTML:

<p xml:base="http://www.example.org/foo"><a name="xyzzy"/></p>
<p xml:base="http://www.example.org/bar"><a href="#xyzzy"/></p>

Even with the proposed RFC2396 revision, the second href will refer to 
the first href (at least I think so), whereas in the analagous case in 
RDF it will not.  Surely there is something wrong somewhere if XHTML and 
RDF behave inconsistently in this respect. And I have never come across 
another XML vocabulary that scopes IDs to the current base URI.

James

Received on Sunday, 15 June 2003 20:08:34 UTC