XHTML Events

Hi,

   Could someone please explain to me, why
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xhtml-events-20010608 introduces 4 new
elements to handle events? Why was it preferred to add new elements
instead of relying on scripts themselves to handle events? I'm sorry but
I don't see why e.g.

    <img id="special" ... >
      <onevent id="override" type="dom-click">
        ... the desired event handler ...
        <stopevent/>
      </onevent>
    </img>

should be a good idea. This appears to me like 

  <center>
    <font face=arial color=#5eff00>some <b>important</b> things<br><br>
    this is <s>deleted</s> and this <u>underlined</u><br><br>
    we can even have
    <blockquote>
    <ul>
      cool and <blink>blinking</blink> indentation
    </ul>
    </blockquote>
  </center>

but with scripting rather then visual information. I see even the style
attribute beeing deprecated in XHTML 1.1, so most style information will
be kept out of the document but does the WG really consider to mix
structural and semantic rich XHTML elements and attributes with
scripting? What's wrong with some generic event model to register
events? E.g.

  ...addEventListener( "submit", submitListener, 0);
  ...submitListener::handle_event( evt )
  {
    /* handle this event */
  }

maybe with some additional parameter (an ID) to identify for which
elements the current Listener is active? I don't see what value this
XHTML Event module add to XHTML. I could even live with those event
handling attributes for most XHTML elements, but I don't see any good
reason why scripting information should be kept inside the document
structure instead of the script itself.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann { mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de } http://www.bjoernsworld.de
am Badedeich 7 } Telefon: +49(0)4667/981028 { http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
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Received on Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:55:38 UTC