- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 05:51:16 +0000 (UTC)
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, dolphinling wrote: > > > > I'm not saying don't add MathML to HTML. I'm saying don't add > > namespace syntax to HTML. > > Is this feasible? As much as I'd like this for ease of use, at some > point or other when enough things have been added to html, there will be > conflicts. Namespaces seem like the only way to avoid those conflicts, > and there needs to be some way of representing those namespaces. Since we can control what becomes valid HTML, yes, I think it's feasible. > > Some pages even have completely bogus namespaces on the root <html> > > element, which would make the entire page screw up. Even worse, Office > > HTML, of which there is a LOT on the Web, uses namespaces in a way to > > trigger IE to do one thing, but relies on the other browsers *not* > > handling the namespaces to make sure it all works everywhere. (Like I > > said earlier, I've worked with one browser vendor who tried > > implementing this namespace thing before, and had to back out because > > it broke real content in pretty fundamental ways.) > > OUCH. > > Is the list of bogus namespaces relatively confined? Would it be > technically feasible to enumerate the worst ones and say "ignore these"? The list is pretty big, actually. It's quite depressing. > Are there any reasons besides ease of use and misuse in tag-soup content > that XML's namespace syntax shouldn't be added to HTML? I can't think of any other reasons off-hand, no. But those reasons are so big that I find it difficult to think of anything but those problems when I consider namespaces, so it might just be that I'm not thinking clearly enough to see the other problems. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Friday, 3 November 2006 21:51:16 UTC