[Bug 9923] Clause 3 in definition of "eligible item set" for ID/IDREF is redundant

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9923





--- Comment #2 from C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>  2010-08-13 00:10:13 ---
For the record:  the proposal adopted for bug 2040 is given at

 
http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2004/06/xmlschema-1/structures.cleanup-3.200610.html#sic-id

and suggests an explanation for the redundancy:  when it was adopted, clause 2
required only that the item have been validated successfully, not that it have
a [schema actual value].  So when it was adopted, I don't think clause 3 was
redundant.  The wording involving [schema actual value] was introduced as a fix
for bug 2041 by the "Omnibus/consent agenda proposal" of May 2007:

 
http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2004/06/xmlschema-1/structures.consent.200705.html#sic-id

Bug 2041 focuses on defaulted values, and introduces the reference to [schema
actual value] as a way of including them explicitly.  It's easy to conjecture
that because (a) we were focusing on fixing 2041, and (b) we were regarding
this is a light-weight non-controversial change and trying to keep things
light-weight, both the editors and the WG failed to notice that the change
rendered clause 3 redundant.  In everyone's defense, the form then taken by
clause 3 was

  if it is an element information item, then clause 3.2 of Element Locally
Valid 
  (Element) (§3.3.4) does not apply. 

and not, as now:

  if it is an element information item, then it is not ·nilled·.

which may be a little easier to connect to the presence or absence of [schema
actual value].

Since clause 3 was not present in 1.0, there is no particular need to retain it
for purposes of error-code backward compatibility.  I don't know how people who
care about clause numbers as sources of error codes will react to the proposal
to split clause 2.  Personally, I think it would probably be clearer to split
it into new clauses 2 and 3 (in either order).

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Received on Friday, 13 August 2010 00:10:15 UTC