Philippe Nobili wrote: > On 03/14/2011 10:46 AM, Hussein Shafie wrote: >> Philippe Nobili wrote: >>> >>> Something completely different related to ID-generation; in our XML >>> dialect, all elements need to be uniquely identified by XML IDs; these >>> IDs are used internally, so we want to avoid at all price our authors to >>> bother about them. >>> >>> So, we added the *generateIds="true"* property to the >>> *newElementContent* element in our .xxe file. And this works fine. We >>> have a couple of additional questions to definitely improve ID's >>> management for our XXE plugin: >>> >>> 1)* [minor]* Is there a way to control how these IDs are generated ? >>> (e.g. providing a common prefix or so) >>> >>> 2) *[important]* If we write templates for some elements, is there a way >>> to add automatically generated IDs in the generated elements, i.e. a >>> kind of equivalent to the XSL "*generate-id(.)*" function call ? So >>> far all we could do is assign erroneous IDs, e.g. id="???" to the new >>> elements (so, we removed the use of templates since we cannot end-up >>> with invalid files). >>> >>> 3) *[vital] *The copy/paste feature of XXE is really great; is there is >>> a way to "override" (this is probably a wrong terminology) it to force >>> IDs of new elements to be re-generated ? (otherwise we end-up with >>> duplcate IDs which has very bad consequences in our case). What we had >>> in mind is a mechanism which would allow us to automatically change >>> copied elements. >>> >> We have nothing against improving the automatic generation of IDs. But >> let me ask you a question first. Given the fact that all elements >> eventually have unique, automatically generated IDs, is it really >> important for an author to have access to these IDs, immediately, in >> real time. I mean, the author inserts a new element and must be >> immediately be able to use its unique, automatically generated ID, to >> create a cross-reference for example. >> >> If the answer is no, then a validateHook can automatically generate >> automatic IDs and also can automatically fix duplicate IDs. > Thanks for your reply; the answer is 'no' in our case, because the IDs > are used internally only, the authors are never aware that there are IDs. > > We do use IDs to cross-reference elements, but it's for internal > processing use, it shall not be a user's concern either. So clearly, we > do not want authors to bother about IDs or manage IDs in any way... Even > if they will see the IDs in the default attribute panels, they won't > dare to edit them if they are not told to do so... > > We understand that we can use a *validateHook* to fix missing/duplicate > IDs; is there a way to run something equivalent on newly created > elements only (a 'createHook'...) ? >
This wouldn't be useful because a newly inserted element would get its automatic ID as soon as the document is validated/saved. (Something like "???" would be of course automatically replaced.) In a nutshell, we can guarantee that with such validateHook, after a document is validated/saved, each element would have its own, unique, automatic ID matching exactly the text pattern you want. Such validateHook is quite easy to write in Java. References: * http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/configure/validateHook.html * http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/dev/validatehook.html -- XMLmind XML Editor Support List [email protected] http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-support
