Misleading error message when invalid ID starts with a number

[rdeltour]

From PeterSHa...@gmail.com on June 29, 2012 01:21:08

When an ID attribute (I found the issue on the id attribute of an item in the OPF manifest) starts with an illegal character (a number, in my case), the error message given is 'value of attribute "id" is invalid; must be an XML name without colons'.

That's true, but made me think the issue is with colons in the name. It'd be nice if it was clearer about the issue; ideally giving the exact issue with the specific name. If it needs to be a single message for all cases, it'd be nice if it was rewritten for clarity - possibly "must be an XML name, and cannot contain colons", to emphasize there are two rules in play. Or actually mentioning the constraints on an XML name (or a URL to them).

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/issues/detail?id=193

[rdeltour]

From markus.g...@gmail.com on July 18, 2012 08:12:29

This message is indeed suboptimal, but comes from Jing, so EpubCheck does not really have control over the message contents. I suggest you report this to the jing-trang project on google code instead.

Status: WontFix

[rdeltour]

From benson.b...@gmail.com on December 28, 2012 00:36:11

How is it correct that an id attribute cannot contain a colon? As I understand it can be any opaque string: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#the-id-attribute

[rdeltour]

From bobmy...@gmail.com on April 08, 2013 04:40:32

The same error message is generated when the id starts with a digit, which should be legal in HTML5.

[rdeltour]

From flie...@gmail.com on August 28, 2013 04:47:01

I recognized this error as well, when having values like "0001" in ids of par-elements in smil-files.

According to the suggestion of project member markus.g... I filed an issue on the project-page of jing-trang: https://code.google.com/p/jing-trang/issues/detail?id=174