Re: Requirement 5

/ Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> was heard to say:
| Placing the id attribute in the XML
| namespace, has the effect of
| inadvertently applying IDness to
| constructs which are intended not to
| have it through the intermediary of
| canonicalization. I therefore believe
| that the current draft of xml:id does
| not meet its stated requirements, and
| request that the working group revise
| the draft so that this requirement is
| satisfied before issuing it as a
| recommendation.

I find this line of argument baffling.

There are clearly bugs in the C14N spec. I don't think there's any
blame or fault associated with that, bugs happen.

  1. C14N predicted the semantics of attributes that were not
     under its control and those predictions turned out to be
     incorrect.

  2. It handles xml:base incorrectly.

The fact that xml:id causes this C14N bug to become evident in a
slightly different way than xml:base does is being used as an argument
for renaming xml:id to xmlid for the expedient of working around the
bug. Are we to fix the bug with respect to xml:base by rescinding that
specification and reissuing it using the attribute name 'xmlbase'? (I
note, though I recognize that it hardly constitutes a reasonable
argument in this case, that had the XML Recommendation named xml:lang
and xml:space, xmllang and xmlspace, respectively, that we'd probably
be in the same situation with respect to xmlid. Would the argument
then be that we should name it xml:id?)

It seems to me that C14N needs to be fixed. Fixing it will remove any
problems associated with xml:id (that would not equally be associated
with xmlid). I don't see any motivation here for renaming xml:id.

In addition, I remain of the opinion that users who will immediately
understand what xml:id is and why and how it works will be confused
and disturbed by xmlid. I further suspect that a fair number of them
will not have remembered the fact that unqualified names beginning
with "[xX][mM][lL]" are reserved and have probably already constructed
elements and attributes with those names (even, conceivably, xmlid).
(Though again, that does not constitute a reasonable argument here.)

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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