Re: Naming Rules

Chris Maden (crism@oreilly.com)
Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:32:51 -0400 (EDT)

[Christina Portillo]
> I need some clarification on the differences in the naming rules
> defined in the XML SGML Declaration and the Naming Rules defined in
> XML Part 1 Names and Tokens.

[...]

> My understanding of the Name restricts the 1st character position to
> a letter or a underscore or colon which is in sync with the SGML
> Declaration. But the NameChar allows underscores and colons in the
> remaining character positions which is at variance with the naming
> rules defined by the SGML Declaration.
>
> Can you clarify this for me?

Characters defined as NAMESTRT, LCNMSTRT, or UCNMSTRT are usable as
name characters; that is, name start characters are a strict subset of
name characters, and so definition as the former implies definition as
the latter.

The relevant productions from ISO 8879 are:

[52] name character =
name start character |
Digit |
LCNMCHAR |
UCNMCHAR

[53] name start character =
LC Letter |
UC Letter |
LCNMSTRT |
UCNMSTRT

(See <URL:http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/sgmldefs.html>.)

Note that this information is not necessary to understand the XML
Recommendation; the name productions in REC-XML are correct as they
stand.

-Chris

-- 
<!NOTATION SGML.Geek PUBLIC "-//Anonymous//NOTATION SGML Geek//EN">
<!ENTITY crism PUBLIC "-//O'Reilly//NONSGML Christopher R. Maden//EN"
"<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
<USMAIL>90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA" NDATA SGML.Geek>