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"If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid (not decoded fragid), then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document" There is no corresponding documentation in the portion of the spec for the "a" element indicating that a "name" attribute is legal, or what its semantics might be. (http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/text-level-semantics.html#the-a-element)
The documentation you seek is at http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/obsolete.html#obsolete in the paragraph starting "Authors should not specify the name attribute on a elements."
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: No change. Rationale: That's because <a name> isn't conforming.
Oughtn't the reference to the "name" attribute be removed from the algorithm, in that case? It's still there, as of the 17 May 2013 nightly draft. (http://drafts.htmlwg.org/html/master/browsers.html#the-indicated-part-of-the-document) (In reply to comment #1) > The documentation you seek is at > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/obsolete.html#obsolete in the > paragraph starting "Authors should not specify the name attribute on a > elements."
Robert, the specification has two sets of requirements: 1) Requirements for page authors. In this case that's "Do not use <a name>". 2) Requirements for UA implementors. In this case that's the text you quote in comment 0. The text for UA implementors can't go away, since there are lots of existing sites, dating back well over a decade now, that depend on that behavior.