Re: [xsl] Attribute constructor for @xml:id

Subject: Re: [xsl] Attribute constructor for @xml:id
From: "Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2017 19:31:14 -0000
This problem is envisaged in the XSLT spec. See B'11.1.2:

The xml:base, xml:lang, xml:space, and xml:id attributes have two effects in
XSLT. They behave as standard XSLT attributes, which means for example that if
they appear on a literal result element, they will be copied to the result
tree in the same way as any other attribute. In addition, they have their
standard meaning as defined in the core XML specifications. Thus, an xml:base
attribute in the stylesheet affects the base URI of the element on which it
appears, and an xml:space attribute affects the interpretation of whitespace
text nodes within that element. One consequence of this is that it is
inadvisable to write these attributes as attribute value templates: although
an XSLT processor will understand this notation, the XML parser will not. See
also 11.1.4 Namespace Aliasing which describes how to use xsl:namespace-alias
with these attributes.

Michael Kay
Saxonica


> On 7 Feb 2017, at 17:15, Martin Holmes gtxxgm-xsl-list-2@xxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I just hit a problem uploading what I thought was good XSLT 2.0 into
exist-db. This is what the problem looks like:
>
> <xsl:variable name="xmlSource">
>   <div type="ajaxFragment" xml:id="{$thisId}" n="{$sortKey}">
>     <head><xsl:value-of select="$citationCaption"/></head>
>        [...]
>   <div>
> </xsl:variable>
>
> eXist's XML parser complains that the @xml:id is not a valid NCName, which
of course it's not, but I hadn't until now considered the possibility that
is-id constraints might apply to this kind of constructor in output content.
Some on the eXist list have suggested that this is invalid XSLT, but Saxon has
never complained about it and I can't actually find anything in the spec that
clearly says so. There's an obvious workaround using the more verbose
constructor, but I'd like to know whether this is in fact technically wrong or
not. What say you?
>
> Cheers,
> Martin

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