Re: [xml-dev] IDs without DTD/Schema , Is there a way ?

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

At 01:34 AM 25/10/01 -0700, Ronald Bourret wrote:
>There are only two ways to determine if an attribute is an ID attribute:
>
>1) From a DTD or XML Schema
>2) The attribute name is hard-coded in your application
>
>You cannot just look at an attribute and decide if it is an ID
>attribute. 

Yes, and this is one of our really big outstanding serious
architectural problems.  It's really important for the 
workings of the web that an address such as 

http://example.com/foo#Chapter12

have well-defined semantics.  If foo turns out to be XML, 
this is hopelessly underdefined.  At various times James Clark
and I have both suggested that we just brutally hijack the 
attribute name "id" and assert that it is of DTD type ID.

Other ideas have included using xml:id or having a reserved
namespace http://w3.org/xmlid or some such; any attribute 
associated with it is of type ID.

This one isn't going to go away.  -Tim