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Subject: object name attribute
I was asked during the TC telecon to describe why the name attribute should continue to be supported on the DITA object element. The object element in DITA is essentially a copy of the object element in XHTML 1.0 Strict. I understand the idea is to allow the creation of such objects in DITA for passthrough. The name attribute on an HTML object is how it is addressed in the DOM programming model, for example to identify a component of a form. Of course, DITA does not directly support HTML forms, but a stylesheet can generate a form from a DITA document and include the DITA object in the form for some purpose. So it is likely that if someone is using object, they may be programming to access its name attribute in the HTML. The id attribute is another way of addressing a particular object, at least in the W3C DOM, but it cannot always replace the name attribute. An id attribute must be unique within an HTML document. The same HTML document could have several form elements, each with their own submit buttons, and each with identical object elements. All those object elements may need to have the same name attribute because they serve the same purpose in the program. If the intent is to support XHTML objects in DITA, then I believe all the attributes from the XHTML side must be supported in the DITA object. Bob Stayton Sagehill Enterprises DocBook Consulting bobs@sagehill.net
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