Re: IDs - make them case sensitive

Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> 
> > From: Murray Altheim <altheim@mehitabel.Eng.Sun.COM>
> 
> > The idea of not being
> > able to have what is essentially a numeric type (ID) not be able to
> contain
> > a completely numeric value seems somewhat strange. Like my Sun ID# is
> all
> > numbers, my SSN# is all numbers and dashes, etc.
> 
> My guesses are it was
> 
> * to stop  "if a<3 then blort" causing start tag recognition, because
> of the extreme conservatism of the original design (all those context
> checks on delimiters),
> 
> * to avoid names being numbers, as a matter of human-readability.
> 
> Neither of these reasons seems applicable to XML.  But that is no
> reason to get rid of SGML compatability. XML shouldn't call something
> an ID if it is not an SGML name.

They shouldn't but if they do, then the lack of a normative
reference makes sense.  It means XML is not SGML and will continue 
to diverge in all probability.  That is bad news.  Some of us 
now have to go to customers that were paying attention to 
XML and say, "no, another hustle without a business case". 
Hopefully what has been learned here can now be applied to 
SGML and HyTime to get an ISO version that will be conformant, 
testable, stable, etc.
 
> If people really want IDs to be able to start with digits, they can
> also demand of their local WG8 delegates [snip]

That is the right process for sure.  

The ID can't be a number dilemma has been a nuisance.  I'm 
not sure why it is there, but it adds a step to document conversions
I've done because instead of using the paragraph number which 
is probably there, I have to add in an alpha.  
But it is just a nuisance, not a showstopper.

len

Received on Tuesday, 1 July 1997 19:32:42 UTC