[whatwg] Should ID be required for <DFN>?

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 21:55 +1100 UTC, on 2006-01-14, Lachlan Hunt wrote:

> Eugene T.S. Wong wrote:

[...]

>>> Eugene T.S. Wong wrote:
>>>> I read the specification on <DFN>, and I really like it...
>>>>  Some manuscripts will need to refer to a <DFN> that is on another
>>>> page. Will there be a way of doing that?

Just a thought: perhaps applicable elements (those with a non-empty title
attribute) could have an optional src attribute containing a URL to the
remote document?

<p>Teal'c activated his <abbr title="Dial Home Device"
src="http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/">DHD</abbr>
and so Hammond ordered the iris to be opened.</p>

[...]

>> How would users and
>> developers access definitions without an ID?
>
> Link to the nearest anchor in the relevant section of the page or, at
> the very least, just to the page itself.  It's not an ideal solution,
> but there's not much else that can be done.

Some authors set IDs on every 'section' of their pages - on heading levels
for instance - to make it a bit easier for others to hyperlink directly to
sections. I don't think a HTML spec should require this, but with the trend
towards using automated authoring systems, this could get in more common use
as such systems could easily automatically insert IDs for heading levels.

But XPointer looks like it might be more realistic. I wasn't aware of it
until just now. Is it being implemented in any user-agents already?


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>