Re: [XBL] inherits / inherited

On Wed, 6 Dec 2006, Cyril Concolato wrote:
> 
> In Section 2.6 "The inherited element" and Section 2.7 "The xbl:inherits 
> attribute" use the same root 'inherit' while they are about different 
> behaviors: - "inherited" is related to the extends attribute and to 
> inheritance - "inherits" is related to attribute forwarding. Please 
> rename the second to "forwards" or something less confusing.

I spoke with David Hyatt about this and we agree that xbl:inherits 
clashing with inherited/extends is a bit confusing. We don't really like 
the idea of calling it 'xbl:forwards', though, because that is easier to 
typo than 'inherits' for some reason. I'd rather have xbl:inherits and the 
resulting minor confusion than xbl:forwards and the resulting typos.

Do you have any better suggestions for an alternative name?


> Could you explain why the WG prefered specifying the attribute 
> 'inherits' with a specific syntax (difficult) to parse and not an 
> element with sub-elements like the following ?
> 
> <forwards>
> <attribute name="[bound element's attribute]"/>
> <attribute name="xbl:text">some text</attribute>
> </forwards>

Elements are harder to process (you have to handle erroneous tree 
structures, whitespace nodes, unexpected other nodes, etc), and 
significantly harder to author. Also, in the case of the shadow tree we 
would have to somehow hide the <forwards> elements from the final 
flattened tree, the creation of which is already quite a confusing 
operation. Overall, the parsing of the attribute is less difficult than 
the processing of elements in this situation.

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

Received on Saturday, 6 January 2007 08:21:04 UTC