Names of objects are changed when exporting to SVG

Question

I noticed that AI CC version 25.4.1 (macOS 11.4 German) changes the names of objects in SVG.

Example: A rectangle with the name "(BG)" becomes <g id="_x28_BG_x29_"> in the exported SVG.

_xNN_ looks like Unicode when NN are two decimal numbers. So the two brackets become _x28_ and _x29 respectively.

Unfortunately, I found that there is no system. Because a colon ":" or "." remains a dot in SVG.

Other special characters like π -> π or Ä -> Ä become real unicodes.

Where can I find a list of which characters are translated and how?

And why is that necessary at all? In Inkscape, an SVG element can also be called (BG) with real brackets.

– Jens

Test Screen Name · Accepted Answer

Adobe is just following the rules of SVG. In simple language "A stand-alone SVG document uses XML 1.0 syntax, which specifies that valid IDs only include designated characters (letters, digits, and a few punctuation marks), and do not start with a digit, a full stop (.) character, or a hyphen-minus (-) character." (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Attribute/id)

In highly technical language see https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#NT-Name

Ignoring the many Unicode characters allowed in IDs, this means

Start with a-z A-Z _ :

Continue with a-z A-Z 0-9 _ : . -

You could report this as a bug in Inkscape.

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