Re: XML namespaces on the Web - proposal restated

On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:37:18 +0100, Liam Quin <liam@w3.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:00:19AM -0500, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> A more relevant question would be: what is Liam's intent?  Having talked
>> to him at TPAC, I gather that he would like to see an XML' (read as: XML
>> prime) which differs as little as possible from the current XML
>> recommendation but is somewhat more suitable for a (possible niche) set
>> of use cases that he doesn't perceive HTML5 satisfying.
>
> Sam, thanks for steering the ship back onto course.
>
>> If I understand Liam's intent correctly, I believe that such entails a
>> lot of work: a lot of specification, a lot of advocacy, a lot of coding,
>> and lot of testing, etc.
>
> I hope not. I'll restate my original goals -- it might be that
> they don't align with the "distributed extensibility" topic.
> Certainly I did not intend to open the door to changing XML to allow
> silent error recovery as part of this proposal.
>
> 1. Make it possible to serve XHTML as text/html in such a way that
>    HTML and XML processors end up with the same interpretation of
>    the document as HTML documents, even in the presence of "svg" and
>    "math" elements.

This is already possible (if you ignore minor changes such as the  
namespace of the "xmlns" attribute on the <html> element).


>    I have proposed "Unobtrusive Namespaces" as a mechanism
>    for XML processors outside Webbrowsers, and "Imaginary Namespaces" as
>    a mechanism to describe how HTML 5 Web browsers actually work.
>    If accepted, there would be no code change for a Web browser to
>    support Imaginary Namespaces.  There would, however, be a
>    namespace definition file that would be part of the HTML 5 spec
>    (I hope as an external file referenced by the spec, though).

Do I understand correctly that you're proposing a purely editorial change  
to HTML5?


> 2. Make "namespace mashups" and user-defined namespaces possible without
>    the need for, or with a reduced need for, the existing XML
>    namespace syntax.  This is bring the XML "Unobtrusive Namespaces"
>    proposal into Web browsers, and is an attempt to address
>    disrtibuted extensibility in HTML/Web user agents.
>    This part would indeed require coding and testing, although
>    "a lot" is subjective.

Wouldn't "namespace mashups" and user-defined namespaces require writing a  
namespace definition file, which seems like at least as much overhead as  
using namespace syntax?


> I hope this is clearer.  I'll see what I can do with regard to
> a prototype of unobtrusive namespaces (and anyone who can help
> with that feel free to contact me, I'm pretty maxed out for
> the next 2 weeks, despite officially being on vacation...)
>
> Liam
>


-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Friday, 20 November 2009 09:07:06 UTC