xml:id response

Here, I am forwarding my response to Chris Lilley's suggestion
to the Blueberry comments list.  Paul Grosso.

>Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:17:11 -0500
>To: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>,Steven Pemberton <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>
>From: Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>
>Subject: Re: Prototype XHTML 2.0 DTD with partial XLink support (was
>  Re: What    are the advantages of using XLink?)
>Cc: Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org>,w3c-html-wg@w3.org,
> HTML CG <w3c-html-cg@w3.org>,w3c-xml-cg@w3.org
>
>At 03:59 2001 07 19 +0200, Chris Lilley wrote:
>>Steven Pemberton wrote:
>>> 
>>> > Another headache is fragment identifiers.  Mozilla / Netscape 6 treat
>>> > IDs in XML documents as fragment identifiers, on the other hand,
>>> > since they don't fetch external DTDs, they don't know which attribute
>>> > is of type ID :-<  So, in general, fragment identifiers are defunct
>>> > in XML documents.
>
>>It is particularly annoying to have to have 50 or so <!ATTLIST whatever
>>id ID #IMPLIED> where whatever is replaced by every element in the
>>current namespace, given that it is common practice to allow an ID on
>>anything.
>>
>>So given that the apparent solution employed in XML 1.0 - just define it
>>in the internal DTD subset which has to be parsed anyway - does not seem
>>to be either popular or practical, I would like to see xml:id added to
>>XML Blueberry since it would still serve a very useful purpose. 
>
>fwiw, this was discussed during the original XML development and
>decided against.  But I agree that we can re-evaluate the decision.
>However, we are trying to avoid opening the gates to feature expansion
>in Blueberry.  Instead, we have defined it to have a very limited scope.
>So, while I will forward your request to the Blueberry requirements
>comment list, I'm not sure the WG will agree to include it.  (But you
>should certainly make your case.)
>
>However, I would make a different proposal.  Rather than adding yet
>another magic attribute (which have their own problems, both in dealing
>with them in the DOM and Infoset as well as getting them into implementations),
>I would suggest we add some syntax to attribute declarations (which already
>exists in the Web Annex of the SGML standard!) to allow the declaration
>of attributes on all elements.  Then the single line:
>  <!ATTLIST #ALL id ID #IMPLIED>
>could be added to the internal subset--which already has to be read and
>processed by all XML processors--and all elements would have the desired
>id attribute.  This allows the added flexibility of naming the id attribute
>anything the user wants, and it has the added benefit that all implementations
>have to do is add recognition of the "#ALL" part, and the rest of things fall
>into place.  And the DOM and Infoset need not change at all.

Received on Thursday, 19 July 2001 10:25:22 UTC