Re: [xml-dev] Understanding the ID

[John Wilson <tug@wilson.co.uk>]

The Apache SOAP implementation (and others) supports
encodingStyle="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap/literalxml" which allows XML
documents or fragments of XML documents to be included in a SOAP message
without escaping >, & and < or Base64 encoding the file. It occurs to me
that a SOAP message could contain two XML fragments with xml:id attributes
with the same value (there seem to me to be equivalent problems with the
other proposals).

My understaning of Tim Bray's original suggestion was that xml:id would
*always* by of DTD type ID. I believe that this would have broken SOAP (I
make no comment as to the already brokenness of SOAP!). I think any
realistic proposal will need to address the ussue of XML documents
containing arbitray fragemnts of other XML documents.

John Wilson
The Wilson Partnership
http://www.wilson.co.uk