period in XML tags

Question

Studying XAML now, I keep seeing XAML tags in the format Object.Attribute. For example:

 
     OutOfBrowserSettings Sh         


        

Answer 1

XML's naming rules are clearly explained e.g. here:

XML elements must follow these naming rules:

• Names can contain letters, numbers, and other characters
• Names cannot start with a number or punctuation character
• Names cannot start with the letters xml (or XML, or Xml, etc)
• Names cannot contain spaces

Any name can be used, no words are reserved.

The URL I gave continues with "best practices" recommendations which do include

Avoid "." characters. If you name something "first.name," some software may think that "name" is a property of the object "first."

But, this is just a recommendation (breaking it may make your XML kind of hard to use with certain software), just like the one agains using -. Out of the recommendations, the only really crucial one is to avoid using : in XML names (since that does conflict with XML namespaces!-).