Re: [xml-dev] So maybe ID isn't a problem after all.

[Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@rbii.com>]

On Sunday 11 November 2001 05:01 am, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 01:19:21AM -0500, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:
> > People understood XML pretty well.
>
> Hum, coming from basically 2 years of work educating the Gnome project
> developpers to use XML, they are making real use of it, but certainly
> not specialist in markup languages.
>
>   If you limit it to:
>     - well formedness
>     - just ascii
>     - strip "formatting blanks"
>
> then this is is true.

OK. I probably overstated the ease-of-use thing, but I was pretty much just 
thinking of elements, attributes, and text.  My experience is that users, 
*not* developers,  can grok things at that level pretty easily.

> I don't think xml:base is any more complex than understanding encoding
> support, or xml:space. 

Well, I think xml:space is another misguided attempt, so cheerfully ignore it 
and recommend that other do the same. As for encoding support... only those 
who have a need have to learn about it.

> On the other hand properly setting the DOCTYPE and having working
> Catalogs (SGML or XML) is still black magic for a number of
> users of XML (i.e. not designers). And this is the basic building
> blocks needed to have a working framework in practice.

I don't think you need these in order to use XML effectively. In some cases, 
yes, in most, no.

>   If you put xml:id="foo" on an element then blah.xml#foo will point to it
>
> is relatively clear and simple. On the other hand

Why special case it though? The main thing ID's buy you is a guarantee that a 
validating parser is going to ensure the values are unique. How about 
ignoring all the DTD and XML special treatment and simply say that

   foo.xml?@id='bar'

will point to all id attributes with the value 'bar', or something suchlike, 
*in the context of your application*?

>   I think the first case gives them 80% of their pointing needs. I won't
> suggest they use anything like this for existing DTD like DocBook we use
> for documentation where DTD processing is basically mandatory, but for
> all the simple uses like small data storage (configuration files,
> speadsheet format, etc...) it just fits the bill. Most of those simple
> cases don't even have a DTD defined for them.

Sure, so if they don't have a DTD, why are we pushing something that has 
meaning only in that context? The only reason I've seen

  foo.xml#bar

proposed is for HTML compatability, and guess what, I've not seen much HTML 
using that construct. Why not put in place a more generic, and just as simple 
solution? AT least people wouldn't have to learn special rules, and remember 
when they apply and when they don't.