Re: XMLNS in Inkscape and other editors

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:06:29 -0800, Gavin Carothers wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> On Nov 20, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>>> On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:05:11 +0100, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>>> Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Shelley took up the problem that SVG editors are known to place
>>>>> namespaces in their code, thus automatically being invalid - bug
>>>>> 7510 [1].
>>>>> 
>>>>> However, online services such as Gooogle Sites [2] (formerly known
>>>>> as Jotspot [3]) do the same, directly in the HTML (XHTML served as
>>>>> text/HTML). E.g. from the Chromium homepage[4]:
>>>>> 
>>>>> <body xmlns="http://www.google.com/ns/jotspot" id="body" class=" en">
>>>> 
>>>> Good catch.
>>>> 
>>>> But isn't this simply a case of a bad xmlns attribute value (a proper
>>>> bug), instead of a try to use namespaces for embedding additional
>>>> data?
>>> 
>>> That body element holds several elements carefully linked to the XHTML
>>> namespace. For example:
>>> 
>>> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="COMP_14720868319272995"
>>> class="sites-embed">
>> 
>> Do you think it was intentional to make the body not be an HTML body?
>> Doesn't seem likely to me.
> 
> I agree, it's totally unlikely that anyone meant for the body tag not
> to be in the XHTML namespace. [... snip ...]
> The goal of not breaking the web can't only be met by
> browsers. [...]

It was no accident that I compared Google Sites/Jotspot with Inkscape: 
Both use namespaces for stuff on the editing side. We can only 
speculate about the intentions. Both of them clearly expect that their 
use of namespaces doesn't have any in browsers - because namespaces 
aren't available in today's text/HTML. (And this - that namespaces 
aren't available in text/HTML - is also the likely reason for why 
Google Sites doesn't care). They also both know that when served as 
application/xhtml+xml, then namespaces are available.

What none of them know - and not you or Maciej either - is what the 
effect of declaring a default namespace on the <body> element will be 
when namespace in text/HTML becomes available.

In my reply to Maciej I suggested that two <body> elements would be 
created - one in the (X)HTML namespace and one in the foreign namespace.

What do you think should happen?
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Saturday, 21 November 2009 15:57:14 UTC