Re: Object Element Re: WaSP Asks the W3C (2005)

Karl Dubost wrote:
>>>> I was wondering how OBJECT is supposed to work in future  versions  
>>>> of XHTML when XHTML 2.0 changes the name of the DATA  attribute to  
>>>> SRC. Also, how relevant is OBJECT in XHTML 2.0?
>
> So your first question is not clear? If you ask how object will work  
> with src attribute, I would say by implementing it, but stating the  
> obvious doesn't make sense.

In XHTML 2.0 there is a SRC attribute, in XHTML 1.x there is a DATA 
attribute. I was just pointing out that OBJECT is not forward compatible 
at all.

(It's also in a different namespace, the element, but I was just talking 
about the element itself.)


>> This was in response to the article on the WaSP site which asked  for 
>> comments on this particular mailing list and I was wondering  how they 
>> could state that OBJECT is forward compatible when it isn't.
>
> That's an interesting problem not related to object. How do you  define 
> "forward compatible" and "backward compatible"?

A technology is forward compatible when its successor merely updates it 
and does not make any significant changes to it so that the previous 
incarnation of the language is no longer useful in implementations that 
only have implemented the successor.

Backwards compatible is that the successor of the language still renders 
normally in implementations that only implemented previous incarnation 
of the language.

(Here that is not the case, as XHTML 2.0 introduces a new namespace 
which UAs won't recognize.)


>> I was talking about HTML4 here. I certainly hope XHTML2 will just  
>> break on <b> <i> </b> </i>.
>
> Error Mechanism for HTML 4.01 is defined in
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/notes.html#h-B.1
> Though it's not normative.

And not very interesting at all. It doesn't say for example what the DOM 
should be for the above markup.


> For XHTML 2.0, do you mean the presence of non well-formed foreign  markup?
> XHTML 2.0 is a format, not a user agent, therefore it will not break.

Well with 'break' I meant some XML parse error.


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>

Received on Thursday, 26 May 2005 07:12:45 UTC