Re: Shorten <object> in XHTML 2.0?

--- Jens Meiert <jens.meiert@erde3.com> wrote:
> 
> <irony>Sorry, but there are so many Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc. students
> involved in this discussion, is nobody here who can propose a real generic
> and
> consequent solution for it right now?</irony>

Well, here is an opinion from a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student ;-)

First off, let me say that I am not well versed in XML, but I thought XML was
extensible. Can't people create their own <obj /> element in their page that
would be an <object /> element? If so, then they can rename it at their own
descretion.

> 
> In practice it's totally irrelevant if you use <object /> or <obj />, <image
> /> or <img />, <paragraph /> or <p /> (as long as it works), but one (and
> maybe the most important) thing is missing: a consequent naming. Why is there
> <td />, but <object />, why is there <p />, but <title /> (please, don't tell
> me any history or background...)? So I -- and I guess there are some other
> people, too -- prefer one single way to name elements, and then all
> discussion
> is over.

With respect to what browsers would do, if obj were now available as obj or
object, they would simply handle both the same way and it would probably be
something like a 4 line fix (assuming based on Mozilla's code), so it wouldn't
change anything except to be more convenient to the user.

<title> is not an oft-used element (it only appears once in the head) so doing
it as <t> or something wouldn't have much point, especially since the shorter
tags <tt>, <p>, etc back in the days of HTML 3.2, etc were generally reserved
for things you would use multiple times in most pages. Will people really load
their pages up with fiftenn <object /> elements? Possibly, if it becomes more
accepted by user agents.

I agree consistancy is good, and don't see a problem with adding <obj /> as an
alias for <object /> as long as the original method remains. The only issue is
you are creating more work for the UA developers, and possibly slowing down
parsing by a few hundred microseconds having to check for two versions of the
same element.

> 
> 
>  Jens Meiert.
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org> writes:
> > 
> > > Draft, but since the second Working Draft the spec introduced
> > > the Embedding Attribute Collection [1], which means any element can
> > > embed an external resource (such as image), not just 'object'.  Most
> > > simple image inclusions will be done through the 'src' and 'type'
> > > attributes, and only complex cases will be dealt by the 'object'
> > > element.
> > > 
> > > [1]
> >
>
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xhtml2-20030506/mod-attribute-collections.html#col_Embedding
> > 
> > Cute, but unwise.
> > 
> > I quote from the cited section 6.6:
> > 
> > : Examples:
> > : 
> > : <p src="holiday.png" type="image/png">
> > :     <span src="holiday.gif" type="image/gif">
> > :         An image of us on holiday.
> > :     </span>
> > : </p>
> > : 
> > : <table src="temperature-graph.png" type="image/png">
> > : <caption>Average monthly temperature over the last 20 years</caption>
> > :
> >
> <tr><th>Jan</th><th>Feb</th><th>Mar</th><th>Apr</th><th>May</th><th>Jun</th>
> > :    
> > <th>Jul</th><th>Aug</th><th>Sep</th><th>Oct</th><th>Nov</th><th>Dec</th>
> > : </tr>
> > : <tr><td> 4</td><td> 2</td><td> 7</td><td> 9</td><td>13</td><td>16</td>
> > :     <td>17</td><td>17</td><td>14</td><td>11</td><td> 7</td><td> 4</td>
> > : </tr>
> > : </table>
> > 
> > With this design a user agent will waste time checking for non-empty
> > values of the src attribute for *every* inline and *every* block level
> > element.
> > 
> > Doesn't processing strategy usually involve looking only at particular
> > attributes of interest based on the name of the element?
> > 
> >                                     -- Bill
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jens Meiert
> 
> Steubenstr. 28
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> 
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> 
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> 


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Received on Monday, 30 June 2003 13:27:47 UTC