On Jun 22, 2006, at 22:27, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:05:52 +0200, Dave Hodder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Would it make sense to reuse xml:id rather than having a separate
id attribute in the XBL namespace?
I suggest you read http://groups.google.com/group/
netscape.public.mozilla.xbl/browse_thread/thread/b60a06b80cca6681/
a1eb0fdb3e57897b on that topic.
I think the counter-arguments put forth in that thread don't make
much sense, or at least are deliberately exaggerated.
Ian claims that foo.setAttributeNS('http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/
namespace', 'id', 'bar') is more work than the non-NS version. That's
true, but for accessing something as common as the ID of an element,
I'd expect to have a .id field, not to have to work all the way
through .setAttribute (NS or not).
I don't buy the argument that in the markup it makes a diff to the
user whether it's xml:id or just id. If it were xml:this-is-the-
bloody-ID-of-the-element I'd see the point, but not here. If that is
meant to be a genuine argument, then the element names that were
chosen are clearly way too long! Can't we please just have bind,
impl, tpl, cnt, inh, res...?
The xml:id is not meant for "proprietary" languages, it's meant so
that you can usefully manipulate a document without having to first
implement a specialised DOM. When you want to do simple server-side
(or otherwise offline) Perl hacking, it's a killer feature. Unlike
XLink it has no declaration overhead (and is actually useful). It
comes for free and works — what more can one ask for?
--
Robin Berjon
Senior Research Scientist
Expway, http://expway.com/
