Re: FPWD Review Request: HTML+RDFa

Shane McCarron wrote:
> 
> Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> I don't think so as it would violate one of the more important design 
>> principles the HTML WG has, namely that of DOM consistency. 
> 
> Okay - I have a stupid question.  Right now, today, in HTML5, it is 
> possible for me to declare the 'mathml' and 'svg' namespaces, right?  If 
> that is the case, how are those attribute declarations manifested in the 
> HTML5 DOM?  In the XHTML5 DOM?  Do these achieve "DOM consistency" ?  
> And if so... can't we just extend that model so that 'xmlns:ANYTHING' 
> follows the same rules?  What am I missing here?

As currently defined, section 9.3 defines 6 known namespaces.  What 
namespace a given element or attribute is assigned to is defined by the 
parser.  xmlns attributes have no bearing on this mapping.  However, 
section 9.2.5.1 indicates that xmlns (no colon, i.e., default namespace) 
attributes may be used on elements, but such usage is only conformant if 
the value of the xmlns attribute exactly matches the namespace that the 
parser assigns to the element.

My understanding is that the RDFa draft that Manu produced does not 
change the parser mapping rules for element and attribute names to 
namespaces, so the only remaining question is whether the use of these 
attributes in the manner defined by Manu's draft would be considered 
conformant should such language ever be a part of a W3C Recommendation 
produced by this Working Group.  My reading of sections 2.2.2 and 3.2.1 
does not produce a clear answer to this question.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Thursday, 3 September 2009 17:11:16 UTC