XHTML M12N: Attributes in the XHTML namespace

Dear HTML Working Group,

  Section 3.1 of the XHTML M12N Second Edition Working Draft states:

[...]
  If additional elements are defined by a module, the attributes defined
  in included XHTML modules are available for use on those elements, but
  MUST be referenced using their namespace-qualified identifier (e.g.,
  xhtml:id). The semantics of the attributes remain the same as when
  used on an XHTML-namespace element. 
[...]

I do not quite understand how this is supposed to work. It seems to me
that the semantics of e.g.

  <foo xhtml:type="..." ...>...</foo>

is ambiguous as it could mean the MIME type of a resource, the style of
a new list construct, or the type of a new kind of input element. You
further introduce a name clash in the XHTML 1.x namespace for e.g. the
names

  * abbr
  * cite
  * code
  * dir
  * frame
  * label
  * link
  * object
  * span
  * style
  * title

for which both elements and attributes exist in the XHTML 1.x namespace.
This does not look architecturally sound. Please ask W3C's Technical
Architecture Group to review this section of the specification. This
also seems inconsistent in that using e.g.

  <p xhtml:id="..." ...>...</p>

is not allowed and/or that user agents are not required to process it as
if it were

  <p id="..." ...>...</p>

It is also not clear to me whether user agents are allowed to process
these in the same way. Please clarify this in the specification.

regards.

Received on Monday, 19 July 2004 14:57:05 UTC