4. ID assignment and the empty string

|   2. ID assignment is performed.

It should be stated explicitly that the value used for ID assignment
is the normalised value obtained in the previous step.

Also, should the following:

   xml:id=""

...be special-cased in the spec? At the moment a strict reading of the
spec leads me to believe that such an attribute would make the element
have an ID consisting of the empty string, which would thus be found
by using, e.g.:

   document.getElementById('')

I would assume that much software has been written with the assumption
that the empty string implies the lack of an ID. I would recommend
changing step 2 of the processing section to read:

   2. If this normalised value is not the empty string, ID assignment
      is performed using the normalised attribute as the ID.

This would take care of both these comments.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 18 November 2004 14:04:14 UTC