Syntactically incorrect IRIs in href attributes

I wish there were a publicly accessible issues list/bug database, 
because I could swear I've raised this before; but looking through 
the archives I don't find it.

What should a processor do in the case where the href attribute 
contains a string which is not a legal IRI reference? For instance, 
it includes bad hexadecimal escape sequences?

In particular is this a resource error or a fatal error? I don't find 
any language in the current CR that's clearly on point. I suspect 
this is covered under:

Resources that are unavailable for any reason (for example the 
resource doesn't exist, connection difficulties or security 
restrictions prevent it from being fetched, the URI scheme isn't a 
fetchable one, the resource is in an unsupported encoding, or the 
resource is determined through implementation-specific mechanisms not 
to be XML) result in a resource error. Resources that contain 
non-well-formed XML result in a fatal error.

But I'm not sure. Clarification in the spec would be useful.

Consistency with XPointer syntax errors, which are recognized as 
resource errors, also suggests these should be resource errors.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo@metalab.unc.edu
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml            
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA

Received on Saturday, 15 May 2004 10:34:26 UTC