Re: ID Characters (was: Re: 3.4. Global attributes)

Can I request that we update the "HTML 5 differences from HTML 4" [1]
document regarding @id?

(why? so people are aware and familiar with these changes).

[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/html4-differences/Overview.html



On 8/2/07, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/1/07, Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 1, 2007, at 9:01 AM, Jim Jewett wrote:
>
> [It would be OK to _explicitly_ just delegate to another standard,
> such as xml or Unicode appendix 31, which defines identifier syntax --
> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/tr31-8.html]
>
> > > But my recommendation (to document authors) is still to stick with
> > > ASCII letters of a single case plus (non-initial) digits.  ...
>
> > I see what you're saying here now. I think I would rather see
> > something like this addressed through one of the "green' notes.
>
> Putting it in a Green notes would be fine.
>
> > Something like:
> >
> > "Note: Authors should be aware that some legacy tools may not handle
> > Unicode characters outside the ASCII rang properly when processing
> > IDs. For maximum compatibility authors should stick with ASCII only
> > characters in producing a value for the @id attribute."
>
> Slight rewording to
>
> "Note: Authors should be aware that some tools may not handle all IDs properly.
> For maximum compatibility, authors should use IDs starting with an
> ASCII letter, containing only ASCII letters and numbers, and
> containing only a single case (upper or lower) of letter."
>
> > In this way we let authors know about wearing seatbelts. However, we
> > don't make it seem like we endorse the continued poor state of the
> > tools. ... After all many of those maturity issues may be fixed
> > even before we go to CR status.
>
> It isn't just legacy tools that will get this wrong.
>
> Many tools written primarily for something other than HTML5 will
> continue to be used with html, simply because they are available and
> familiar.  Other languages (including xml and html 4) have different
> rules.
>
> Even new (but simple or homegrown) tools written explicitly for use
> with html5 will often get this wrong, because people will continue to
> assume the "obvious" constraints on an ID.  (Depending on their
> previous experience, they may disagree about what those constraints
> are, but they won't always think to remove the constraints.)
>
> -jJ
>
>

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2007 01:59:36 UTC