dreadedmonkeygod . net

Roy Osherove uncovers this travesty:

Name

In prior versions of the WiX toolset, this attribute specified the short file name. This attribute's value may now be either a short or long file name. If a short file name is specified, the ShortName attribute may not be specified. If a long file name is specified, the LongName attribute may not be specified. Also, if this value is a long file name, the ShortName attribute may be omitted to allow WiX to attempt to generate a unique short file name. However, if this name collides with another file or you wish to manually specify the short file name, then the ShortName attribute may be specified. Finally, if this attribute is omitted then it is defaulted to the value of the Id attribute.

I'm a huge opponent of playing games with field values. Any spec that contains the language "if the FOO field is null..." gets a long, hard look from me, and I usually argue in favor of a more normalized design. I'm not a pedant, but getting into the kind of territory described above is a sign that you have some housekeeping to do in your design.