Re: Validity constraint issue with form controls

Yes, I see your point.

The following text from 5.21 of Modularization of XHTML is confusing:

QUOTE [

The name attribute was used historically to identify certain elements within 
HTML documents. While the name attribute has been supplanted by the id 
attribute in all of these elements... 

]

The passage is ambiguous -- it could be interpreted to mean that the phrase 
"these elements" in the second quoted sentence refers to "certain elements" 
in the first quoted sentence.  You're saying that "these elements" refers to 
the collection of elements ( a, applet, form, frame, iframe, img, and map ) 
but not other elements that use the 'name' attribute? 

Furthermore, please clarify a similar vaguery in C.8 of the XHTML 1.0 spec:

QUOTE [

..the type of the name attribute has been changed to NMTOKEN.


]

Does that statment apply only to the name attribute as used with the 
collection of elements ( a, applet, form, frame, iframe, img, and map ) but 
not other elements that use the 'name' attribute?  This is of particular 
importance regarding form control element types such as input, select, and 
textarea.  I program in PHP, which uses a syntax name="someName[]" or 
name="someName[someKey]" for form control elements to achieve a particular 
effect.  I had thought that syntax to be invalid upon reading the quoted 
passage. 

Is the declaration of the 'name' attribute as type CDATA correct for elements 
such as input, select, textarea, etc.? 

Is it expected that the 'name' attribute will persist for those element types?

If so, is it expected that the type will persist as CDATA (thereby allowing 
the characters "[" and "]" among others to appear in the attribute value, 
thereby allowing usage of the aforementioned PHP syntax among other things)? 

Thanks,
Jesse


Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org> wrote on 12/5/01 1:42:56 AM:

>The Name Identification Module defines the attribute name for
>*a collection of elements*.  Form control elements like "input"
>are not in this collection, since the name attribute on those
>elements is not intended to define a unique anchor but to assign
>a control name, which may be shared by several form controls.
>This module and its deprecation has nothing to do with the name
>attribute on form control elements.
>
>Regards,
>-- 
>Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
>W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Wednesday, 5 December 2001 20:33:51 UTC