[Bug 25290] [Custom]: Ban uppercase and leading "xml" in custom element names?

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25290

--- Comment #5 from Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org> ---
(In reply to Simon Pieters from comment #4)
> (In reply to Robin Berjon from comment #3)
> > This is reserved so that XML Core can potentially add elements using their
> > own protected naming. I don't think that we should enforce this because:
> > 
> >   1) It seems extremely unlikely to ever happen.
> 
> Maybe you can convince the XML people to drop the reservation?

I'm happy to contact them if you think it helps.

> >   2) XML parsers don't enforce this (that I've ever seen).
> 
> That's by design. It'd be hard to introduce a new element if parsers
> rejected it. :-)

You'd think that, but this was actually a heated debate when xml:id came out.

> >   3) Because of (2), it is not entirely rare for people to actually use
> > "xml" in their element names.
> 
> [citation needed]

Well, I won't dispute that it's tough to get hard data on this, especially
since search engines drop the "<" and web corpora don't have much content.
Here's my experience for this: I spent a solid decade on XML support lists and
four years on a job that exposed me to schemata written by a wide variety of
other people which I had to make work with a tool I was developing. I saw such
elements regularly. The classic is an extension point called a variation on
<xmlContainer>. Books also had examples like that.

> >   4) In the unlikely event that XML Core were to create such an element, I'm
> > guessing it would be far more likely for it to ever be supported as a custom
> > element than directly by the browser.
> 
> The reason here would be to allow the XML Core WG to mint a new element that
> they have reserved for, and for browsers to implement it, without custom
> elements having poisoned the name already. This is the same reason we
> require the dash.

I understand the reasoning, but it actually cuts both ways: if XML Core were to
produce an element that contained a dash I think the feedback should be "don't
do that".


> >   5) It's unclear to me why XML Core would need this given that they can use
> > namespaces if they want to, too (notably xml:).
> 
> I thought namespaces were uncool? :-P

Not in XML Core :)

> Anyway, if we choose to ignore XML's reserved prefix we should drop that
> requirement from HTML's attributes also.

Sure.

Overall this is quite a corner case that we'd be creating if we enforced this
rule, and I prefer avoiding creating new corner cases. I reckon it's the sort
of thing that can be linted if desired but which there is little value in
enforcing.

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Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2014 09:09:14 UTC