Re: XBL 2 and xml:id

On Jun 27, 2006, at 19:33, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Robin Berjon wrote:
>> The xml:id is not meant for "proprietary" languages, it's meant so  
>> that
>> you can usefully manipulate a document without having to first  
>> implement
>> a specialised DOM. When you want to do simple server-side (or  
>> otherwise
>> offline) Perl hacking, it's a killer feature. Unlike XLink it has no
>> declaration overhead (and is actually useful). It comes for free and
>> works — what more can one ask for?
>
> This is exactly the kind of impractical ivory-tower arguments that  
> caused
> XBL2 to leave the W3C last time.

Would you mind taking the time to explain what about the above  
position is:

  a) impractical
  b) ivory-tower
  c) conducive to XBL leaving the W3C

?

> There's nothing wrong with the name "id". The idea that you might  
> need to
> manipulate XBL2 documents using Perl on the server side is crazy.

I am always manipulating documents with Perl (or otherwise), on the  
server or simply offline. No offence intended but if you look at it  
with a cool head you might agree that calling other people's uses  
"crazy" just because you don't have the same yourself would seem to  
me to be more ivory-tower than the reverse.

Using xml:id instead of id brings benefits to at least some of the  
folks who intend to use this, and comes at no cost that has been  
described so far. So what's not to like?

> Even if
> you did, XBL2, HTML, SVG, and other such languages, which are all  
> intended
> to be "core" languages, can trivially be supported natively by your  
> perl
> library, and don't need to use "xml:id".

If it is so trivial I would be indebted to you if you were so kind to  
provide me with the code that handles querying compound documents of  
the above as easily and with comparable performance to using xml:id.  
I'm always happy to learn a new Perl trick.

-- 
Robin Berjon
    Senior Research Scientist
    Expway, http://expway.com/

Received on Tuesday, 27 June 2006 18:45:38 UTC