Re: [xml-dev] Re: determining ID-ness in XML

[Marcus Carr <mrc@allette.com.au>]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> I issue a new request for a standard xml:target attribute. This would
> provide a unique name for XPointers to link to. It would have no
> necessary type. It would have no affect on validity. The documents in
> which it appears may or may not have DTDs, may or may not be valid,
> and may or may not declare this attribute with any particular type.

Leaving aside the mechanism, this free and easy approach seems very
desirable. If I understand correctly, it just provides a means of saying
"within the scope of this document, you can point at any node with an
attribute in this list:..."

> Whether such a document was valid would be determined exactly
> according to the rules of XML 1.0. If xml:target (and everything else
> in the document) were properly declared the document would be valid.
> If xml:target were not properly declared, the document would not be
> valid.

In the DTD, you'd need to define xml:target to cover pretty much every
CDATA attribute then, wouldn't you? Without knowing the context that the
instance will be used in, how can you determine whether a particular
attribute might be useful as a unique identifier? The instance should
scope what is a unique identifier - why get the DTD involved at all?

> No parsers would change. The definition of validity would not
> change. The only necessary change would be to XPointer and other
> client specifications that needed to pay attention to this attribute.
> Everybody else can ignore it.

And everyone who may need to validate downstream from the instance being
regarded as well-formed only will need to change their DTDs or strip out
the invalid attributes? It sounds like a pretty hard sell to me...


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
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Allette Systems (Australia)      www:   http://www.allette.com.au
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein