Re: [xml] HTML input element and IDness

[Geir Aalberg <list+perl-xml fandom no>]

on 03/01/2006 07:02 PM Rob Richards said the following:
> I am not 100% sure of the correct behavior here as this is from a bug 
> report I received, but reading the CVS log for version 1.174 of valid.c
> * valid.c: in HTML, a name in an input is not an ID
> it looks like the behavior is wrong. It appears to never indicate an ID 
> if an input element is passed in regardless of the attribute name.
>
> My eyes are a bit buggy from all the parenthesis, but I believe this 
> patch correctly fixes the behavior:
> - if att name is "id" then its an ID
> - if att name is "name" then its an ID if no element passed in or the 
> element name is not "input".

By what logic is the "name" attribute used as an ID? There is nothing in the 
HTML DTD indicating this, and the HTML 4.01 spec only specifies that "name" 
must be unique for the A element. For other elements it is perfectly 
reasonable to expect multiple "name" attrs with the same value - not only 
INPUT, but also SELECT, TEXTAREA and PARAM (presumably in different FORMs or 
OBJECTs). Sure, it would be a bad idea to use several FORM or MAP elements 
with the same name, but AFAIK it's not illegal.

[This must not be confused with the SGML basic type NAME, which is used in 
the HTML DTD for several attributes (e.g. "http-equiv"). Also, some "name" 
attrs are defined as NAME while others as CDATA, see 
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#type-name ]

-geir