RE: Extensibility strategies, was: Deciding in public (Was: SVGWG SVG-in-HTML proposal)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Julian Reschke
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 6:53 AM
> To: Ian Hickson
> Cc: 'HTML WG'
> Subject: Re: Extensibility strategies, was: Deciding in public (Was:
> SVGWG SVG-in-HTML proposal)
> 
> >>> as has been detailed in depth in the last few days -- people find
> >>> prefixes inordinately confusing, they add a level of indirection
> where
> >>> none is
> >> People also find class names for CSS confusing.
> >
> > Indeed. Let's learn from our mistakes instead of adding more.
> 
> So, out of curiosity, what would be a better design for CSS?

People who don't understand CSS classes use the much maligned inline styles.
And frankly, I really don't know why people on this list have such a problem
with inline styles. My view of HTML is that it is where everything comes
together and gets late-bound. Inline styles is just "later-bound" than an
external stylesheet, since it can override it. But I digress...

> > How do you propose to have a distributed extension system with URNs,
> if
> > you're not using the domain name system to guarantee uniqueness?
> Aren't
> > you just trading one central repository (the HTML WG) for another
> (the URN
> > registry)? Could you elaborate on how you see this working?

If the URI/URN (or whatever UR*) class names are not being de-referenced,
then who *cares* if there could be a clash somewhere? It is irrelevant, so
long as the CSS tree for the current document does not have any clashes. And
if it were, who cares? Because CSS handles multiple definitions just fine,
the one "closer" to the tag (externally defined, then internally defined,
then inline style) overrides indentical attributes while allowing
non-identical attributes to inherit up.

So I really am not sure why you guys are so worried about clashing class
names, it seems like a non-problem to me. Am I missing something?

> - the spec to give rules for the formats of these names, so clashes are
> avoided (if you use a URI, use one you have authority over), and

This concept of mandating that the HTML author have "authority" over a
URI/URN that they are using as a class name is not working for me. This is
the second time that you've mentioned it, but I really do not understand:

* How do you want to define "having authority over"?

* How do you handle someone importing a CSS stylesheet from a URI that they
do *not* "have authority over*, such as is the case when using a public
widget library?

Sorry to just jump into the middle of this conversation like this...

J.Ja

Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 14:25:45 UTC