[whatwg] Citing multiple <blockquote> elements in HTML5

[Calogero Alex Baldacchino]

Ian Hickson ha scritto:
> What terminology would you prefer rather than "subtree"? (We can't say 
> document, since we are also trying to define conformance rules for 
> disconnected subtrees handled from scripts.)
>   

I was thinking again on that. Let me suggest something like the 
following (and just do suggest, I'm far from wishing to impose my point 
of view, and don't want to be pedantic, but I belive deeply exploring 
every alternative may improve the specification).

"The _id_ attribute represents an element unique identifier in the 
subtree within which the element finds itself and must contain at least 
one character. In this context, a subtree is either a whole document 
tree, or a tree of Node instances containing HTMLElements and 
disconnected from any HTML document; a subtree of a document tree is 
contained in a subtree of the first type, thus id values must be unique 
in the containing document (e.g. a duplicate id inside a document tree 
is always illegal, even if a branch of the document can be isolated 
where the id is unique, unless such branch is removed from the document).

This specification requires the _id_ attribute value to be unique in a 
subtree of the former type, thus a subtree of the latter type (e.g. a 
document fragment manipulated by a script) to be inserted into an HTML 
document must fulfil such requirement, as well as any other requirements 
defined in this specification for conformance purpose. Any API dealing 
with ID properties in any type of subtree must consider the _id_ 
attribute value of an HTMLElement as the element's default ID property; 
however, this specification doesn't preclude an element having multiple 
IDs, if other, API-specific mechanisms can set an element's ID in a way 
that doesn't conflict with the id attribute" - then the rest.

One rational for the above is that, formally, a subtree disconnected 
from any actual HTML document might be out of scope for current 
specification, which defines conformance rules for HTML documents and 
related contexts (such as a script context or a browsing context, both 
applying to a 'connected' subtree, as far as I've understood), while a 
subtree which is disconnected from a specific HTML document, but is 
contained into another one (thus coinciding with the containing document 
tree) is yet covered by the constraint for whole documents.

Another rational is that current specification, while relying on at 
least one method affected by IDs uniqueness in a document tree (that is, 
DOM Core Document.getElementById), does not provide, nor refers to, any 
API which might be directly affected by the uniqueness of an id 
attribute value in a disconnected subtree, thus such an API may be 
indirectly related to id values uniqueness if ID properties are relevant 
for its facilities, but the subtree itself cannot be constrained by 
conformance rules before its insertion into an actual HTML document.

A further rational is that a disconnected subtree might contain Node 
instances not implementing the HTMLElement interface, such as a 
DocumentFragment node, but also MathML/SVG elements, which might be 
embedded content elements coming from an HTML document tree, but also 
from a document of a different kind where the embedded content was 
represented by HTML elements, thus, without a sure knowledge on the 
subtree origin, applying an HTML-specific conformance rule might not be 
a correct choice, until the subtree is to be inserted into an HTML document.

For the question related to space characters inside an id value, I'd 
suggest,

"An ID property is not expected to contain space characters, so the 
value of an _id_ attribute should not contain any space characters. 
However, an id attribute can hold a decoded fragment identifier value 
for the purpose of same-document references, thus space characters are 
tolerated for the purpose of conformance, in order to avoid applying 
restrictions to an otherwise legal fragment identifier value not being 
part of a _URL_."

Everything, of course, IMHO.

Best regards,
Alex.
 
 
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