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

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

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> It can not be so, because four years ago the XML Working group
> decided to let documents be invalid. Validity is optional in XML. It
> is not required.

Sure, but why preclude documents from being both well-formed with IDs and valid at
the same time? Making the two mutually exclusive is totally unnecessary and could
have a massive impact. The decision to allow documents to be well-formed (rather
than the less appropriate term "invalid") was to allow documents to be nimble,
used in ways previously not considered. Adding an attribute to the data is
burdening it with a new schema.

> If you're adding or stripping attributes willy-nilly
> during a document's lifecycle without paying attention to what the
> DTD says, then the document may become invalid.

I couldn't agree more. That sounds like a good reason to use PIs instead of
attributes. Worse than adding attributes willy-nilly, we're on the verge of
mandating their addition.

> If you want your documents to be valid, you declare all possible
> attributes in the DTD including xml:id/xlink:label/id/shazbot.

But I don't own every DTD that I work with - probably not even most of them. So
what do I do next?


--
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