Re: Is it valid to use dtd entities in defining XML ids?

Mark Banner wrote:
> I'm reviewing some code for a dialog in Address book and need some 
> guidance.
> 
> The submitter has defined an id in the xml for the dialog as:
> 
> <textbox id="Home&StateAndZipCodeLeft.id;">
> 
> In the DTD it is defined as:
> 
> <!ENTITY StateAndZipCodeLeft.id         "State">
> 
> Is this valid?
> 
> In the specification I have been pointed to 
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-attribute-types) says the following:
> 
> "Values of type ID MUST match the Name production."
> 
> Name is defined as
> 
> Name       ::=          (Letter | '_' | ':') (NameChar)*
> 
> The submitter has since pointed out the text :
> 
> The Names and Nmtokens productions are used to define the validity of 
> tokenized attribute values after normalization (see 3.3.1 Attribute Types).
> 
> How I read that section implies that the id as defined above is valid.
> 
> Please can someone with more knowledge just confirm this for me?
> 
> Thanks
> Standard8

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml11-20040204/#AVNormalize is the 
reference in question here, and say that entity references are expanded 
recursively. 3, 2nd <li>.

I think that naming the entity .id when it's really just half of the ID 
value is a bit misleading, though. I'll probably forget to add that to 
the bug by tomorrow, too :-(

Axel