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

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 3:59 PM -0800 11/5/01, Michael Brennan wrote:
>Is there any reason why XLink labels cannot be used for this? If you want to
>use a simple name in a fragment identifier, why not treat the referenced
>element as a resource and give it an xlink:label attribute, and modify
>XPointer to permit use of XLink label names as fragment identifiers as an
>alternative to IDs?
>

That sounds like an excellent idea.  Off the top of my head, I don't 
see why it couldn't work. I just looked in the XLink specification 
and don't see anything there that would prohibit putting labels on 
almost any element in a document you cared to. It doesn't say you 
can, but it doesn't say you can't either. It does say you can't put 
it on certain types of XLink elements which is tricky, but maybe we 
can fix that.

We don't define any new attributes. We just use the xlink:label 
attribute XLink already defines and add one sentence to the XPointer 
spec specifying that a bare name XPointer can point to an element 
with an xlink:label. Sounds good to me.
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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