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

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

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> >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...
>
> No, no, no! If you need valid documents, then the DTD declares all
> attributes that are used in that document, xml:target would be
> declared in the DTD. More importantly, however, valid documents do
> have DTDs, do have ID type attributes, and do not not need to use
> xml:target. It's only for those documents that aren't valid in the
> first place that something like xml:target becomes necessary.

Replace "in the first place" with "at some point in their lifecycle" and you
have a problem. An instance may be used as well-formed or valid any number of
times in any order - if you add attributes, you risk breaking the data for a
downstream player who wants to validate. If that player doesn't control the
DTD, a preprocess will be required to strip the attributes out. How could
this not be so?


--
Regards,

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