Selectors: section 6.5: Error

Section 6.5 of the selectors draft states,

"What makes attributes of type ID special is that no two such attributes 
can have the same value in a document, regardless of the type of the 
elements that carry them; whatever the document language, an ID typed 
attribute can be used to uniquely identify its element. "

I respectfully disagree. Attributes of type ID can and do have the same 
value. A document in which this occurs would be invalid; but such 
documents do exist, are well-formed, and can be usefully processed.


I suggest two things:

1. Weaken the first paragraph to make it clear that there is no 
guarantee that IDs are unique, even if they're supposed to be.

2. Specify what happens when multiple elements share the same ID. I 
would prefer the style rule to be applied to both such elements. 
However, you could logically choose it to apply to only the first. I 
would prefer this behavior not to be undefined.


-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
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Received on Thursday, 29 December 2005 14:04:59 UTC