Re: On ISSUE-41: Decentralized extensibility

Hi Chris,

On Jul 17, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Chris Wilson wrote:

>
> I just realized I'd never sent my opinion about extensibility in HTML.
>
> In short, I think extensibility is a very good idea, with some  
> parameters around it.  Particularly as I look at the challenges of  
> sanely incorporating vocabularies such as SVG and MathML, and then  
> what we would need to do when the next vocabulary comes along, it  
> would seem to be a necessity (or we're just encouraging people to  
> roll their own).  I think it's a poor language that doesn't think  
> about its own extensibility, particularly when its own vocabulary  
> already approaches "prohibitively large".

I agree 100%. By avoiding namespaces in the text/html serialization of  
HTML5 we are creating unnecessary complications fro authors and  
implementors. IE already has a namespace implementation somewhat  
compatible with XMl namespaces for the text/html serialization and all  
major browsers have XML namespace implementations that could be reused  
for the text/html serialization. Authors already familiar with XML  
namespaces and IE namespaces will find transitioning to HTML5 text/ 
html SVG MathML etc needlessly non-standard (in the sense that it is a  
complete diversion to what they're used to).

HTML5 should include namespaces in either serialization that are  
consistent with XML namespaces and IE’s text/html namespaces.

Take care,
Rob