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Re: XPointer crisis

• To: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• Subject: Re: XPointer crisis
• From: Christian Nentwich <c.nentwich@c...>
• Date: 04 Feb 2002 10:42:54 +0000
• Cc: xml-dev@l..., www-xml-linking-comments@w..., Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
• In-reply-to: <200202012136.g11LaZj26264@d...>
• References: <20020201144101.E29819@r...> <1012587257.27106.38.camel@l...> <p05100303b8807575e600@[192.168.155.106]> <1012587257.27106.38.camel@l...> <20020201123611.D29819@r...> <5.1.0.14.0.20020201134448.029015c8@157.189.161.214> <200202012136.g11LaZj26264@d...>

> '//*[@id=foo]' (or some other syntax with equivalent semantics)
> can accomplish everything that 'id(foo)' can.  More, actually:
> it also works with documents that don't have (or have but don't
> reference) a DTD, W3C XML Schema, or other infoset-augmenting
> resource.  As an added bonus, the recipient doesn't have to 
> retrieve (and process!) the DTD/XSD/what-have-you.

As a negative, the ID values won't be in a hashtable after parsing, and
//*[@id='foo'] will take a very long time to execute on large documents
(especially given the descendent axis), unless you implement a
streaming-xpath processor that can catch it on the fly from SAX.

> Re: the 'xml:id' and 'xml:idattr' proposals: these sound reasonable,
> but it seems to me like an awful lot of work to specify, implement,
> and deploy just for the sake of barename fragment identifiers.

Apart from that they are definitely *not* just for the sake of XPointer
or barename fragment identifiers. The absence of an xml:id attribute is
my daily nuisance when I can't get a DTD for some of my data.

Btw xmi:idattr has the big disadvantage of getting lost when you pick a
fragment out of a document and the root element is lost...

Thanks,
Christian Nentwich

• References:
  • Re: XPointer crisis
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
  • Re: XPointer crisis
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • XPointer crisis
    • From: "David G. Durand" <david@d...>
  • Re: XPointer crisis
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
  • Re: XPointer crisis
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@s...>
  • Re: XPointer crisis
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

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