Re: Suggestion for RM HTML formatter extension

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 15.05.12 09:02, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Manuel Collado"<m.collado@domain.invalid>  wrote in message

>> Is seems that p13/2 as a "name" target is legal in HTML, but not in XHTML.
>> In addition, IIUC the use of the "name" attribute is deprecated in favor
>> of the "id" one, and XHTML5 even has dropped it.
>>
>> "id" values don't allow slashes. But slashes could be easily converted to
>> hyphens or underscores, if browser standard compliance really matters. So
>> we could write<RM-A-3-2.html#p13-2>, for instance
>
...
> I was more worried about the periods (which are not optional). They could be
> converted to something else, but then the correspondence between the anchor
> name and the paragraph number would not be as obvious, which would possibly
> hurt the usage (when people want to hand-create these links - which seems to
> be the main benefit of the idea).
>
>> In addition, if old and new browsers have to be supported, I believe it is
>> also possible to have both "id" and "name" target attributes with exactly
>> the same, duplicated value.
>
> That would seem to be necessary (I've only used "name" because older
> browsers don't support "id" - I rather doubt any browsers are going to be
> dropping support for it anytime soon because it is widely used).

Just for reference, the production for [VC:ID] of XML
includes '.' and '-' in the suffix of NameStartChar (NameChar)*.[1]

The CSS grammar, however, doesn't include '.' in its nmchar.[2]
Otherwise one couln't write style sheet rules that select with
elementname.classsname.

But there is a workaround in CSS for incorrect elementname#id.with.dots.
One writes elementname[id="id.with.dots"]. So a combination of '.' and '-'
would be standards compliant, and still practical.

__
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#NT-Name
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-syntax/#grammar