Re: XML namespaces on the Web - proposal restated

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:00:19AM -0500, Sam Ruby wrote:
> A more relevant question would be: what is Liam's intent?  Having talked  
> to him at TPAC, I gather that he would like to see an XML' (read as: XML  
> prime) which differs as little as possible from the current XML  
> recommendation but is somewhat more suitable for a (possible niche) set  
> of use cases that he doesn't perceive HTML5 satisfying.

Sam, thanks for steering the ship back onto course.

> If I understand Liam's intent correctly, I believe that such entails a  
> lot of work: a lot of specification, a lot of advocacy, a lot of coding,  
> and lot of testing, etc.

I hope not. I'll restate my original goals -- it might be that
they don't align with the "distributed extensibility" topic.
Certainly I did not intend to open the door to changing XML to allow
silent error recovery as part of this proposal.

1. Make it possible to serve XHTML as text/html in such a way that
   HTML and XML processors end up with the same interpretation of 
   the document as HTML documents, even in the presence of "svg" and
   "math" elements.

   I have proposed "Unobtrusive Namespaces" as a mechanism
   for XML processors outside Webbrowsers, and "Imaginary Namespaces" as
   a mechanism to describe how HTML 5 Web browsers actually work.
   If accepted, there would be no code change for a Web browser to
   support Imaginary Namespaces.  There would, however, be a
   namespace definition file that would be part of the HTML 5 spec
   (I hope as an external file referenced by the spec, though).

2. Make "namespace mashups" and user-defined namespaces possible without
   the need for, or with a reduced need for, the existing XML
   namespace syntax.  This is bring the XML "Unobtrusive Namespaces"
   proposal into Web browsers, and is an attempt to address
   disrtibuted extensibility in HTML/Web user agents.
   This part would indeed require coding and testing, although
   "a lot" is subjective.

I hope this is clearer.  I'll see what I can do with regard to
a prototype of unobtrusive namespaces (and anyone who can help
with that feel free to contact me, I'm pretty maxed out for
the next 2 weeks, despite officially being on vacation...)

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

Received on Thursday, 19 November 2009 16:37:20 UTC