Comments on initial draft of xml:id

I'm not sure I agree with the statements "DTD authors should not 
declare attributes other than xml:id as type ID for interoperability 
with XML Schema- and non-validating processors. No interoperability 
guarantees are provided in these cases." and "XML Schema authors 
should not declare attributes other than xml:id as type xs:ID for 
interoperability with DTD- and non-validating processors. No 
interoperability guarantees are provided in these cases." There are 
just too many existing applications that use ID, Id, and id as 
ID-type attribute values. XHTML is one. Is there any way to just note 
the issue of interoperability, without making it as strong as a 
"should"?

Section 4.3 states, "If those conditions are not satisfied then the 
processor should report the error to the application.". Can this be 
made more clear about "error"? In particular is this is a fatal or 
non-fatal error?  Please, please don't let this be another of those 
annoying cases where some parsers go one way and some go another. I 
prefer this to be an explicitly non-fatal error, since that's more 
backwards compatible.

Section 4.3 also states, "The attribute value must be a valid 
NCName." I think this should be "The *normalized* attribute value 
must be a valid NCName."

-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo@metalab.unc.edu
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml            
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA 

Received on Friday, 9 April 2004 08:37:40 UTC