023: A reference follows its element through its own rename
Status: accepted, 1 October 2026. Partly supersedes 022: what makes up an element’s place. Partly superseded by 024: what an action on a reference does when its element was renamed.
Context
022 kept a reference when only its element’s ancestors’ names changed. The place it matched on held the element’s own name, so an element whose own name changed got a new reference.
Some elements are named after their content. Mousepad names its text view
after its text. Typing into it three times on a real box gave the text area
three references, e166, then e180, then e184, so the second call to
type into the same reference was refused.
Decision
- An element’s place is its role and its position among siblings of its role, under ancestors placed the same way.
- An element, or an ancestor, that shares its role with a sibling keeps its name in the place, as rows in a list do in 022.
- The rest of 022 stands: a reference is first found by its fingerprint, the place must belong to one element in each snapshot, and the new element’s fingerprint to it alone.
Consequences
- Typing into a text area named after its text keeps its reference, however many times you type.
- A lone button whose name changes, such as Play becoming Pause, keeps its reference: it is the same control.
- A button in a list whose rows all changed still gets a new reference (022), because each row shares its role with the others.
- Of several fields of one role side by side, one whose name changes gets a new reference, as before.