Re: [selectors4] Proposal for extending Selectors Level 4 with possibility to select attributes

On 7.11.2013 13:35, Simon Pieters wrote:
> Nobody suggested it would be a solution. What was under discussion was
> trying to demonstrate that there is a problem that needs a solution in
> the first place. For the Selectors API, I think it hasn't been
> demonstrated yet.

For ITS implementation it's necessary to have ability to select
attributes because attributes are part of HTML/XML documents and can
contain text for translation. ITS tools running in a browser are using
Selectors API to evaluate ITS rules that are using Selectors as a query
language. As Selectors and thus Selectors API currently doesn't support
selection of attributes there is a problem which needs solution.

If you don't see problem here then please be prepared to explain to
"average Joe webdeveloper" why he can't use familiar selectors and has
to learn another and more complex query language called XPath.

Success of CSS and selectors was great. Selectors became query language
of web pages -- approach pioneered by some JS libraries and later on
standardized by Selectors API. But such success also means
responsibility of maintainers of Selectors to cater for those non-CSS
usages of Selectors.

I think it has been clearly demonstrated that there is a need and
use-cases for Selectors to support selection of attribute nodes in a
document. I'm happy to discuss about concrete syntax for this feature or
technical problems that implementation might cause. But simply stating
that you personally don't see problem when others have it is not a
productive way forward.

    Jirka

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jirka Kosek      e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz      http://xmlguru.cz
------------------------------------------------------------------
       Professional XML consulting and training services
  DocBook customization, custom XSLT/XSL-FO document processing
------------------------------------------------------------------
 OASIS DocBook TC member, W3C Invited Expert, ISO JTC1/SC34 rep.
------------------------------------------------------------------
    Bringing you XML Prague conference    http://xmlprague.cz
------------------------------------------------------------------