W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > public-html@w3.org > August 2009

Re: Publishing a new draft (HTML5+RDFa)

From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:02:49 -0700
Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, RDFa mailing list <public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf@w3.org>
Message-id: <9447E28F-2846-4925-9440-ADBE3D8C1BAF@apple.com>
To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

On Jul 31, 2009, at 3:34 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>
>> That being said, MANY people deal just fine with prefix-based
>> indirection, and at least one indirection mechanisms we already  
>> have in
>> HTML (class names -> CSS) is *far* more complicated.
>
> Class names and CSS are also a source of great author confusion.

Class names as CSS selectors are somewhat confusing to authors, but in  
my experience less so than namespace prefixes. I think there are a few  
reasons: (1) indirectly binding style is less surprising to people's  
expectations than indirectly binding meaning/identity, since the  
indirection links two separate things rather than modifying meaning;  
(2) it's harder to make the mistake where you think the class name for  
actually *is* the style, than to make the mistake where you think the  
prefix *is* the namespace, in fact I have not heard of anyone making  
this particular mistake; (3) the effects of incorrect style binding  
are likely to be more immediately visible in the context where they  
are authored; (4) the binding rules of CSS are simpler and so less  
likely to lead to unnoticed copy/paste errors in markup.

Regards,
Maciej
Received on Saturday, 1 August 2009 00:03:33 UTC

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