Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] MathML Core (#438)

@torgo and I chatted about this just now in our virtual face to face.

We recall a discussion with @bkardell about link semantics, and the difficulty of weighing up the importance of backwards compatibility with existing code, and future-proofing for allowing attaching shadow roots.

It seems like backwards compatibility does need to take precedence here, i.e. the existing solution of "anything can have an href". This does mean there will be some extra work necessary at some point to explain when it is possible to attach a shadow root (since `<a>` elements are not allowed to have shadow roots attached), and to explain what happens if someone tries to set an `href` on an element which already has a shadow root.

We can see two options for the latter:
- the `href` takes precedence, and turns the element into a de facto `<a>` element, causing the shadow root and any contents in it to be removed; or
- whichever is attached first takes precedence, so if a shadow root was attached, the `href` attribute has no effect.

All that being said, we have seen that the MathML group has a much better knowledge of the domain than we do, so we would be happy to be guided by whatever decision they made on this topic.

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Received on Wednesday, 23 September 2020 08:14:46 UTC