Re: I18n comment: prefix binding mechanism

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 ishida@w3.org wrote:
> 
> Comment: In 6.1.1, it should be made clear that the styling language 
> (e.g. CSS) must provide a prefix binding mechanism.

The working group discussed this.

Since it is possible to use Selectors with languages that do not have 
namespaces at all (e.g. the language most used with CSS, namely HTML4), we 
do not agree that such a prefix binding mechanism must be provided.


> It is also unclear what effect, if any, namespace declarations in the 
> document being styled have on prefixes used in the stylesheet.

Where the prefixes are defined and what influence, if any, the source 
document has is not for this draft to define. We expect it to be defined 
in the Namespaces module.


On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Felix Sasaki wrote:
>
> I don't understand you. Your reply to comment #3 asks "what is CSS 
> specific about the document?", and your reply here refers only to a 
> syntax module *for CSS*. Maybe this is a general problem. A previous 
> version was called "css selectors" ( 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-selectors-20010126/ ), and your 
> terminology in the document is sometimes inconsistent: mostly you talk 
> of selectors, but sometimes about css selectors (sec. 11), or w3c 
> selectors (sec. 12).

The reference to "W3C Selectors" has been fixed.

CSS Selectors are used when the examples are CSS-specific. CSS is, 
naturally, a major use case for Selectors. However, other use cases exist, 
in practice STTS, and it has also been proposed to use it with XBL2.

These mechanisms, in particular XBL2, can and do use different prefix 
binding mechanisms.


On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Felix Sasaki wrote:
> 
> again: do you depend on css or not?

There is a dependency on CSS2.1's definitions for the pseudo-elements. It 
is perfectly possible to use Selectors without CSS, however.


On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Felix Sasaki wrote:
> 
> IMO the situation looks like:
> 
> - CSS implementations of selectors: depend on syntax module & are fine.
> - other implementations of selectors: if they don't use namespaces, they are
> fine, if not: nobody knows what should happen with namespace prefix bindings.

It depends. In the proposed XBL2 draft, for instance, the XML Namespaces 
syntax (xmlns="" attributes) is used to declare namespace prefixes for 
Selectors. This has to be determined on a per-"host language" basis.


> Why is it not possible to formulate s.t. like "If selectors are used in 
> a language which incooperates the namespace mechanisms, the following 
> binding rules apply: ..."?

Because the rules might vary.

If this does not satisfy you, please let us know.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 24 January 2006 17:50:40 UTC