Re: Decouple XBL2 From CSS

On Sat, 5 Aug 2006, Dean Jackson wrote:
> On 05/08/2006, at 7:08 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> > I have also asked various experts in the field, including implementors 
> > of major Web browser vendors and representatives of the Web Standards 
> > Project. Their advice was almost unanimously to use Selectors rather 
> > than XPath. (In several cases, their actual reply was "what's 
> > XPath?".)
> 
> Is there any way you could get them to provide their advice to this 
> list?

Back when XBL2 was being discussed in the CSS/SVG joint task force I asked 
many of these people to post to the www-svg list. You can find a couple of 
posts there from some of them. Most seem to strongly dislike getting 
involved in the W3C lists, especially on topics such as these.


> I'd be especially interested in hearing the rationale of the people you 
> consulted who wanted XPath support, and how important it is to them 
> (could they wait for a future release, an extension, a new language?).

The people asking for XPath support have all been quite vocal about it and 
most have taken part in this very thread. I will not attempt to explain 
their case.


> BTW - I don't think anyone on this thread is suggesting to use XPath 
> rather than Selectors, which seems to be the argument you're fighting 
> here.

I was primarily arguing against Antoine's proposal:

| I think it would be great if XPath selectors were also accepted for 
| bindings

Since allowing both XPath and Selectors would clearly be a serious 
language design mistake, I assumed Antoine was in fact asking for XPath to 
replace Selectors.

If that isn't in fact what is being proposed, then I don't know what is. 
It would help if, like with previous XBL2 proposals, actual text was being 
suggested, along with use cases and examples that show why the proposal is 
necessary to achieve the desired effect.

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

Received on Saturday, 5 August 2006 06:10:48 UTC