Re: CSS3 namespace feedback

Yes, that helps tremendously.  Perhaps you could attach that to your 
feedback.

I think it is particularly natural for the web because web browsers tend 
to parse the tags of html even if you put xmlns="&foobar;" into the html 
tag.

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Staff Member
Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: 
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"Steven Pemberton" <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl> 
Sent by: public-forms-request@w3.org
03/12/2008 03:00 PM

To
John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA, "Forms WG" <public-forms@w3.org>(new)
cc

Subject
Re: CSS3 namespace feedback







On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:27:40 +0100, John Boyer <boyerj@ca.ibm.com> wrote:
> In the telecon today, we were unable to get back around to the topic 
> after
> the beginning of the call, but with respect to your proposed feedback
> here:
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2008Mar/0012.html
>
> Nick and I both felt that in principle the backwards compatibility
> argument was a good piece of feedback.
>
> I wondered, however, at what a resulting change would look like.  Would
> the behavior of  unqualified names seem bizarre or unnatural to
> namespace-aware authors?
>
> A few code examples might clarify quickly whether it "feels right".

Actually, I think XPath should have done this too. In my experience the 
first place a beginner trips up with XPath is trying to select like 
"html/body/p[1]"and wondering why it doesn't work. The answer is of 
course: you have to qualify elements. It would have been better if 
unqualified names matched any namespace (rather than the mythical no 
namespace).

So, my proposal is:

                 a {text-decoration: underline; color: red}

should work with elements in any namespace, which is how it works now in 
CSS without namespace awareness (as long as the elements are unqualified 
in the document).

If you want to select elements in particular namespaces, then say so:

                 @namespace html "http://..."
                 @namespace svg  "http://..."

                 html|a {color: blue}
                 svg|a {color: green}

So putting it all together:

                 @namespace html "http://..."
                 @namespace svg  "http://..."

                 a {text-decoration: underline; color: red}
                 html|a {color: blue}
                 svg|a {color: green}

all a elements would be underlined. XHTML ones would be coloured blue, SVG 
 
ones would be coloured green, and the rest would be red. In a 
non-namespaced CSS processor, all a elements would be red (and 
underlined).

Does that help?

Steven