Re: xmlns in HTML5

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jul 2009, Toby Inkster wrote:
>> Ian Hickson wrote:
>>
>>> Authors must not use elements, attributes, and attribute values that
>>> are not permitted by this specification or other applicable
>>> specifications.
>>>  -- http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#semantics-0
>> Which "other specifications" are "applicable"?
> 
> Pretty much any that claim to be and that the people affected agree are 
> applicable. If an RDFa specification said that text/html could have 
> arbitrary xmlns:* attributes, then the HTML5 specification would (by 
> virtue of the above-quoted sentence) defer to it and thus it would be 
> allowed. Similarly, Microsoft could write a spec and claim <marquee> is 
> valid, as well as <msword> and <excel>.
> 
> Of course, if a community doesn't acknowledge the authority of such a 
> spec, and they _do_ acknowledge the authority of the HTML5 spec, then it 
> would be (for them) as if that spec didn't exist. Similarly, there might 
> be a community that only acknowledges the HTML4 spec and doesn't consider 
> HTML5 to be relevant, in which case for them, HTML5 isn't relevant.
> 
> This is how specs work. :-)

Is it?

A normative requirement that refers to an undefined set of specs?

Me confused.

Julian

Received on Thursday, 16 July 2009 09:27:47 UTC