RE: [xml-dev] How did "public identifier" get its name...

> Subject: [xml-dev] How did "public identifier" get its name...
> 
> 
> ...and what does the "public" indicate?
> 

A public identifier in XML is just a string, it is not required to be
either public or an identifier.

I think the name was chosen because the authors of the spec had it in
mind that people would use them to hold SGML public identifiers, which
are a previous and only partially successful attempt at doing URIs, i.e.
globally unique names for resources.

Michael Kay