xml:base irrelevant to same document reference

Section 2.14 of the syntax spec says that xml:base is used in resolving 
a URI reference such as "#snack".  I believe this in violation of RFC 
2396. A URI reference such as "#snack" is not in fact a relative URI 
reference (see the BNF in section 11 of RFC 2396); rather it is a "same 
document reference". See RFC 2396 section 4.2. This says that a URI 
reference containing only a fragment identifier is a reference to the 
identified fragment of the *current* document (i.e. the document in 
which the fragment identifier occurs). I believe that for consistency 
with RFC 2396 xml:base should not apply to same document references, and 
also should not apply to rdf:ID.  It seems totally bizarre to me that 
xml:base should apply to rdf:ID when rdf:ID is not a relative URI.  It 
also seems bizarre that rdf:ID should define a fragment identifier in a 
resource other than the one in which it occurs: surely a resource only 
gets to define its own fragment identifiers.

James

Received on Saturday, 14 June 2003 21:51:25 UTC