Re: I18n comment: prefix binding mechanism

>
> * Felix Sasaki wrote:
>>> At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/0601-css3-selectors/
>
>>> In 6.1.1, it should be made clear that the styling language (e.g. CSS)
>>> must provide a prefix binding mechanism. It is also unclear what  
>>> effect,
>>> if any, namespace declarations in the document being styled have on
>>> prefixes used in the stylesheet.
>
>>>> #6 "A type selector containing a namespace prefix that has
>>>> not been previously
>>>>      declared is an invalid selector. The mechanism for
>>>> declaring a namespace
>>>>      prefix is left up to the language implementing
>>>> Selectors. In CSS, such a
>>>>      mechanism is defined in the General Syntax module."
>
>> again: do you depend on css or not?
>
> Selectors can be successfully implemented and used without any mechanism
> to bind a namespace name to a prefix. Selectors that depend on a prefix
> cannot be successfully processed in this case, and the draft defines how
> implementations must handle this error. It is not possible through black
> box testing whether implementations support namespaced selectors or not,
> since the behavior is the same if there are no prefix bindings. Any
> technology that uses Selectors in some way would need to define a prefix
> binding mechanism to allow authors to use prefixes in selectors.
>
> It does not seem very useful to require any such technology to provide
> this; the technology might be constrained e.g. to trees where elements
> and attributes cannot be bound to a namespace, so any selector that uses
> them would match nothing. The references as cited above are just
> informative notes for people looking for more information. So no, there
> is no dependency on the General Syntax module. Does this clarify the
> situation?

IMO the situation looks like:

- CSS implementations of selectors: depend on syntax module & are fine.
- other implementations of selectors: if they don't use namespaces, they  
are fine, if not: nobody knows what should happen with namespace prefix  
bindings.
Why is it not possible to formulate s.t. like "If selectors are used in a  
language which incooperates the namespace mechanisms, the following  
binding rules apply: ..."?

Regards, Felix.

Received on Tuesday, 24 January 2006 05:29:26 UTC