[XBL] Attributes Containing Selectors

Hi.

This is a last call comment on the XBL 2 Editor’s Draft (dated 27
October 2006).

1.2.1 Attributes Containing Selectors
=====================================
  
  The default namespace in selectors in XBL attributes is always unbound
  ("*").

What does the “("*")” mean?  Does it mean that selectors for elements
that no prefix will match an element with that name in any namespace,
and that the default XML namespace as given by an xmlns attribute is not
used?  If so, please say so here.


  The “xmlns” prefix is also defined to always be declared (and bound to
  http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/), but there really is no good reason to
  use that prefix in selectors, so authors are encouraged to avoid doing
  so.

I could imagine a reason: an binding that facilitates the inspection of
a DOM.  Such a binding might have processing dependent on xmlns:*
attributes.

Is there really a need for this note?  It is, after all, what Namespaces
in XML says.


How is case insensitive matching performed on namespace prefixes?  Does
it use UAX#21 full case folding?  For example, would a selector

  ß|*

with the following prefixes in scope

  xmlns:ß="http://example.org/1"
  xmlns:ss="http://example.org/2"

use the "http://example.org/2" namespace URI?


  If it is known that the binding document is only ever going to be used
  from documents that use one namespace, for example if the bindings are
  always to be imported into HTML documents, then it is easier to just
  specify the tag name (as in this example) and ignore the namespaces.

But it’s not the tag name that you are specifying, but the node’s local
name.  It might be that the element’s tag name is h:blockquote, but the
“blockquote” selector will still match it.


  A space-separated attribute whole value is either the empty string or
  that consists of only U+0020, U+000A, and U+000D characters has no
  values.

s/is/that is/, if I understand the intent of the sentence correctly.


Thanks,

Cameron

-- 
Cameron McCormack, http://mcc.id.au/
 xmpp:heycam@jabber.org  ▪  ICQ 26955922  ▪  MSN cam@mcc.id.au

Received on Thursday, 7 December 2006 10:26:35 UTC