- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:16:54 +0300
- To: Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>
- Cc: "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Jul 31, 2007, at 14:05, Ben Boyle wrote: > Perhaps this is another situation where the "element specific > attributes" section is insufficient. It might be good to have an > "XHTML considerations" section which explains that an xmlns is > required. The HTML 5 draft is the way it is, because the namespace declarations in namespace-aware XML aren't normal attributes after namespace processing when XML is modeled properly. The DOM doesn't count as modeling namespace-aware XML properly. XOM and SAX, for instance, do model namespace-aware XML properly. The Infoset spec tries to find some middle ground without pointing out the flaws of the DOM outright, but the Infoset still doesn't treat namespace declarations as normal attributes. The HTML 5 draft is written in terms of the DOM, because browsers are stuck with it, but when the spec talks about allowed attributes it is implied that any element can carry any namespace declarations. It would be inappropriate for the spec to restrict where and how namespace declarations appear in the XML serialization, since doing so would violate the XML layer cake. The spec deals with what to do with elements that are in the http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace, but how might one express such elements in XML is, strictly speaking, out of the scope of the spec. It would be a good idea to acknowledge this piece of XML lawyerism explicitly. > We should have a new section: "The xmlns attribute" This section > should given the recommended usage and contain the note about the HTML > DOM null namespace. In principle, it is wrong for a spec to spend a lot of prose explaining the consequences of its normative references, but in this case it might be a good idea considering the nature of Namespaces in XML. > We should attempt to clarify the terminology throughout the spec: "in > HTML" seems ambiguous clear or should it be "in HTML serialisation" or > "in HTML DOM" or something else ... likewise with (X)HTML or XHTML or > "XML" Agreed. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Tuesday, 31 July 2007 12:17:16 UTC