- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:54:23 +0200
- To: Tony Ross <tross@microsoft.com>
- CC: "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>
Tony Ross On 09-10-22 23.22: > Given some of the comments in this thread, I'd like to step > back and try to get consensus on the core problem. Specifically > I want to know whether or not the group feels providing some > sort of a solution for decentralized extensibility, in > particular decentralized extensibility of markup, is important. > > > In short, should HTML 5 provide an explicit means for others to > define custom elements and attributes within HTML markup? > > Note that supporting decentralized markup extensibility does > not necessarily mean you feel XML Namespaces are the > appropriate solution. Other ideas have been shared and there > are certainly many possible solutions, each with their own pros > and cons. For the moment let's put these discussions aside. If > we cannot agree on the problem, then debating the technical > details of a potential solution is pointless. W3C specs have at least two distributed extensibility methods: profiles and namespaces. Namespaces are difficult to separate from the namespace. That's an advantage when the intention is to never collapse the extension with HTML. And a disadvantage otherwise. Profiles has had success, both with and with the profile attribute/profile URIs. Example: Googles 'nofollow'. Profiles defines semantics for existing HTML features. I think the new data-* attribute will be incorporated into profiles. And I think that just as profiles will cover data-*="", it could also cover <data-myelelement></data-myelement> or <x-myelement></x-myelement> (predefined prefixes). It could also cover <myprefix-myelement> (profile defined prefixes). I disagree with Maciej in that namespaces are easier to incorporate for attributes than for elements. Imagine that Google had introduced "google:nofollow" instead ... Prefixes are today linked to namespaces, only. I think it could be possible to have prefix solution that was linked to profiles as well. The difference would be: namespaces MUST declare namespaces and link the prefix to the namespace. While profiles /could/ also work without the profile URI in the document, and /could/ work without a direct link from the prefix to the profile URI. -- leif halvard silli
Received on Friday, 23 October 2009 10:54:57 UTC