RE: TWO Change proposals for ISSUE-41 : Distributed Extensibility

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010, Tony Ross wrote:
> 
> A few comments:
> 
> 1) We should encourage "x-" extension implementations to provide some 
> mechanism by which an author can change the target prefix. With this 
> addition authors would have a way out if the prefixes of two distributed 
> extensions clashed. The precise mechanism can be left up to the 
> extension itself and not defined by HTML5. In the script library 
> scenario, one of the main use cases I'm concerned with, I would expect 
> this to be as simple as a method call.

Surely the better solution is to just discourage "x" as a prefix 
altogether and to just always have people use their vendor name as the 
prefix, as we do with CSS? That would result in no clashes (at least, I'm 
not aware of CSS ever having had a clash in the decade or so that this 
convention has been in use).

I have to be honest, I don't really understand the point of the "x" 
prefix. It seems unnecessary since people can use their own prefix just 
as easily.


> I'm concerned about restricting other standard specs (especially other 
> W3C specs) to extending HTML via attributes or even this mechanism in 
> general. Perhaps clarifying what you mean by "extension specs" in the 
> proposal summary would help my understanding here.

As far as I can tell, proposal Y isn't intended to address a problem of 
people wanting to evolve HTML, it's specifically about people making 
experimental vendor-specific features.


> 3) The term "vendor-specific" is used frequently in the proposal 
> details, but is a bit narrow in scope. Specifically, I want to avoid 
> implying that script libraries are excluded from defining such 
> extensions.

In what sense would this affect script libraries? Isn't the data-* 
attribute mechanism what script libraries would use? I'm confused.


The problem description as I understand it for proposal Y is only about 
vendors experimenting with non-standard features that might potentially be 
suggested for future development of the Web platform. I don't see how 
other standards or script libraries would be relevant here. What is the 
problem that you are trying to solve? Is it not the same problem?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
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Received on Thursday, 18 March 2010 01:34:50 UTC