• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: another naieve question - valid characters for ID values
• From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
• Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 15:12:50 +1000
• References: <3D515FCB.7040104@t...> <3D515BF2.8F236F15@h...> <200208072006.g77K6W306681@d...>

From: "Joe English" <jenglish@f...>
 
> Tim Bray wrote:
> > Rick Jones wrote:
> >
> > > Why do the the values of an ID attribute have to start with something
> > > besides a number?
> >
> > Inherited from SGML.  No other real good reason for it. -Tim
> 
> ... and SGML did it that way because an ID-valued attribute
> is a name for the element on which it appears, so it has
> the same lexical form as other names.

And names are different from numbers because then they can be used
as name tokens in programming languages and scripts. 

For example, I think it was Netscape 4's object model, an HTML element
was available as an object named by its ID/name.  An element ID that
started with a number would be treated as a number by the JavaScript
(causing an error.)  Whether this is so useful is debatable...

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

• References:
  • Re: another naieve question - valid characters for ID values
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • another naieve question - valid characters for ID values
    • From: Rick Jones <rick_jones2@h...>
  • Re: another naieve question - valid characters for ID values
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

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