Re: Deciding in public (Was: SVGWG SVG-in-HTML proposal)

Julian Reschke 2008-08-01 17.46:

> Henri Sivonen wrote:


>>> What distributed extensibility gives us is disambiguation. But that 
>>> doesn't mean that things won't get peer review.
>>
>> Would we be better off if <canvas> had its Apple origin unambiguosly 
>> on it for the rest of the existence of the Web? Would the Web platform 
>> be better if it were <apple:canvas 
>> xmlns:apple="http://www.apple.com/2004/07/namespaces/webkit/dashboard#"> 
>> instead of <canvas>?
> 
> Actually, yes. It would allow the W3C to now standardize <canvas> 
> without having to deal with that legacy.

Why can't "namespacing" of new elements be moved out of the actual 
tag itself and into the HEAD element instead? For example let's 
say that <greatelement></greatelement> could be enabled via
<meta name=element content="org.whatwg.greatelement" > or through 
"(something better than) @profile". Even the Internet Explorer 
"HTML 5 shiv" [1] comes to mind as a rough example of how it could 
work (but I don't say that JavaScript should need to be involved!)

A system were one had to write <vendor:tag namespace:vendor-URL> 
would perhaps lead to lack of peer review, because other vendors 
would be reluctant towards implementing support for tags which 
included other vendor's name or namespace directly in the tag. 
Wheras having an acceptable extension mechanism could increase 
peer review, as would define method for trying out things.

By doing the exension in the HEAD element, we would avoid having 
<vendor:tags namepsace=URL></vendor:tags> floating around.

The advantage of this method would be that the the act of 
specifying and approving the the tag would be left to W3, which 
could do so without necessarily changing the name of it. When 
approved by the W3, authors should stop using the extension 
mechanism in the HEAD element. In addition, User Agents would be 
required to *not* use the information in the extension mechanism 
if the element (or attribute) had been approved by the W3.

Validators should display a warning, but not display an error 
flag, when using un-approved tags. As long as they are introduced 
via the extension mechanism.


Btw, in CSS, there is a "blessed" mechanism for adding new, 
experimental/vendor spesific "things". According to CSS 2.1, both 
Opera, Microsoft, Mozilla and non-browser vendors have used this 
mechanism. The most well known mechanism is to begin the feature 
with a '-' plus a vendor spesific tag. For example 
display:-moz-inline-block is known to many.

Mozilla has extended this even to CSS selectors. Thus 
:-moz-any-link{} is a selector that only Mozilla browsers accepts. 
(Using that method is the only way to serve CSS rule to mozilla 
browsers only.)

When it it is necessary, and works in CSS, then it should also 
work in HTML.

[1] http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-shiv/
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 3 August 2008 21:56:57 UTC