Re: Verbosity of XHTML 2

Masayasu Ishikawa wrote:
> That's only the tip of an iceberg.  Note that redclaring a namespace
> with different prefix in the middle of a document is perfectly OK
> from Namespaces REC, it's the DTD which is incapable of managing it
> correctly and putting an unreasonable burden on authors.  DTD could
> describe certain subset of XHTML 2 but cannot describe all of them.
> Unless Part 9 of ISO/IEC 19757, a.k.a. DSDL, could produce something
> magical to deal with datatype- and namespace-aware DTDs, I can see no
> good way to manage it reasonably.
> 
> I certainly see the value of validation but I remain unconvinced
> whether DTD-validity should be imposed in XHTML 2, that's part of
> the reasons why I'm playing with other alternatives to see which is
> reasonable and least burdensome to both authors and implementors.

Why not produce a DTD with the default namespace, and tell people it's 
perfectly legal to use others, but that their docuemnt won't be valid? 
It's a compromise but as they go it's not too bad. I think it's easier 
to explain to most authors too if you pretend that the prefix: is just 
part of the element. Certainly most people would be using the defaults.

(How about using the method used with XHTML + SVG + MathML, that is 
having defaults and making it easy for other people to set up their own 
by changing a few entities within the doctype declaration. It won't work 
for mid document namespace changes, but then what will?)

-- 
Lach
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Web: http://illuminosity.net/
E-mail: lach@illuminosity.net
MSN: luminosity @ members.evolt.org
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Received on Tuesday, 13 August 2002 05:03:45 UTC