Re: questions about attribute declarations

At 07:51 AM 24/9/96 +0100, W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
Should XML change the set of types available for attributes?
>>E.g. by suppressing NAME(S), NUMBER(S), NMTOKEN(S), NUTOKEN(S) and
>>adding constraints in the form of regular expressions, ISO dates,
>>language-code, external-id, typed IDREF, ... (7.9.4, 11.3.3)
>
>I'm not sure what the value of suppressing the listed types is. I don't see
>that they add significant complexity and they are useful.

I'd like to see NAME, NUMBER and NUTOKEN retained, but could live without
NMTOKEN and the plural versions. (NAME is important as it is the only way to
get over the problems of non-unique IDs!)

>While Martin Bryan doesn't like it, I think it's reasonable to define a set
>of conventional attribute names: ID, ENTITY, NOTATION, IDREF(S).  Behaves
>the way most people would expect them to behave and removes the need to
>declare the attributes in these cases. Doesn't prevent declaring attributes
>with other names but does prevent using these attribute names for something
>other than their conventional interpretation.  A renaming mechanism could
>be used to map your own names to these conventional names, e.g.:
>
><MyXMLEelement name=foo XMLNames="ID name">
>
>When there's a DTD, the XMLNames (the "architecture renaming attribute")
>could be fixed, but when there's no DTD, you'd have to specify it. (Which
>raises the posibility that a careless author could do something different
>on two different elements:
>
><MyXMLEelement name=foo XMLNames="ID name">
><MyXMLEelement uniqueID=foo XMLNames="ID uniqueID">
>
>Ugh. Would probably have to make it a reportable XML error to map the same
>conventional attribute name to different instance names in the same document.)

As long as the names are remappable I have no problems. My objection is that
id has a different meaning in some languages - is does not mean identifier.
Similarly a German may prefer DING to ENTITY or ZIECHEN for NOTATION. Why
force XML markup to be in English? (We are becoming xenophobic in our
discussions!)
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.u-net.com/~sgml/

Received on Tuesday, 24 September 1996 04:24:20 UTC