Re: SVGT 1.2: "evt" vs "event" as the implicit event argument to event handlers

On Friday, April 21, 2006, 11:37:17 PM, Maciej wrote:

MS> A) I agree that changing what "event" or "evt" means for XHTML or  
MS> HTML event handler attributes is out of scope for SVG.

When you say "changing", which is the published specification that would
change? I ask because as far as we can tell there isn't one. But yes if
this were to change W3C-wide it would be WebAPI that would likely own
that spec.

MS> B) However, in the case of SVG, adding "event" as a second supported  
MS> name for the implicit event parameter (or replacing "evt") would  
MS> clearly be in scope for the SVG WG, and clearly out of scope for Web  
MS> API and CDF. To make this change in a separate spec would require  
MS> directly contradicting the SVG 1.2 Tiny spec as written. Therefore I  
MS> strongly disagree if you think some other working group should change  
MS> what SVG means.

I agree and when this was discussed in the group, adding 'event' to SVG
alongside 'evt' was clearly something SVG would do to help with
harmonization.

MS> C) I strongly disagree that "event" should be deprecated instead of  
MS> "evt". There are many orders of magnitude more HTML documents than  
MS> SVG documents, thus where the two disagree on a point of arbitrary  
MS> naming it is much more sensible to change SVG. There is really no  
MS> significant way in which "evt" is a better name than "event", so the  
MS> change that results in less content changing is the better one, if we  
MS> want this to eventually be harmonized.

Did you count the number of VoiceXML documents as well? The cost of
changing VoiceXML implementations is pretty high, since they tend to be
in mission-critical places.

To be clear - 'evt' is what specifications based on DOM Level 2 and DOM
Level 3 have been using for a while now. 'event' is what HTML browsers
have in practice been using, in an undocumented way.

To ask all specifications that have i good faith used DOM Levels 2 and 3
to change is asking a lot. Then again, to ask the legacy HTML
implementations to change immediately is askig a lot too.

This is why adding 'event' to SVG is suggested, to help with HTML+SVG CDI
cases; but deprecating the otherwise undocumented 'event' over time and
keeping the standardized 'evt'.


-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Interaction Domain Leader
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG

Received on Monday, 24 April 2006 18:28:18 UTC