Re: [xml-dev] IDs considered harmful or why keys might be better thanIDs...

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> If you are asking for a _generic_ processor that understands IDs regardless
> of some magical internal knowledge of every application that exists and
> every that will someday exists, then _this application must parse and
> process the DTD_. ***

Currently that is true. But the question is whether it would be useful
to have some ID-ish thing (xml:id) or an ID-ish declaration (xml:idatts)
available within the document instance without the DTD's

Personally I quite like DTD's but I just wish that (say) that
standalone="no"
would have forced a non-validating parser to go and fetch the dtds
for attribute value defaults and ID declarations, even if it's not
validating.

The fact that you can't rely on external entities being read means that
_any_ use of XML using dtd's "on the web" (which after all was supposed
to be the point of XML, otherwise we could all just have stayed with
SGML) is difficult. Maybe it is all a conspiracy to get us to use
schemas...

David


_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet
delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further
information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call
Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.