[XML-SIG] Using XPATH as references

[tpassin@home.com]

Michael McLay wrote back -

>
> tpassin@home.com writes:
>  > > ...
>  > Michael, this is very interesting.  Looking at your examples, I didn't
think
>  > the nesting levels were especially deep.  As for the references, you
>  > certainly want to use IDs in elements, as you are.  But what about the
colon
>  > in the reference IDs?  That's not according to the Namespace Rec, is
it?
>  > Maybe another character would be better.
>
> Thanks for the feedback.  I did model the usage of element IDs in the
> GenCAM format after the Namespaces Rec, however the Namespaces Rec is
> only concerned about element and attribute names.  The namespace
> concept, AFAIK, are not allowed in element IDs.  At least I haven't
> found a single reference or example that would illustrate how I would
> use namespaces in an ID.

I didn't mean you should have used namespaces.  I meant that the use of
colons in names has been reserved to denote namespace prefixes only.  Since
you aren't actually using XML namespaces, you should change to some other
character instead of a colon.  The available ones are '_', '-', and '.'.
And an ID attribute is still an attribute.

Speaking of which, you're not supposed to use colons in attribute values
which are declared as ID or IDREF, which your example does (assuming that
somewhere you've made that declaration).  The namespace Rec says:

"Strictly speaking, attribute values declared to be of types ID, IDREF(S),
ENTITY(IES), and NOTATION are also Names, and thus should be colon-free.
However, the declared type of attribute values is only available to
processors which read markup declarations, for example validating
processors. Thus, unless the use of a validating processor has been
specified, there can be no assurance that the contents of attribute values
have been checked for conformance to this specification."

Tom Passin