Re: [Role Module] Namespace for 'role' Attribute

Hi, David-

David Woolley wrote (on 10/30/2007 6:08 PM):
> 
> Whom is the developers of browsers and authoring tools.
> 
> Embrace and extend refers to the tendency of these people to retarget 
> features, often missing their original point.  An example I've come 
> across recently is how the desirable feature of CSS, that it doesn't 
> introduce executable content, has been lost as the result of vendor 
> extensions.

<snip />

> By retaining the namespace prefix, one is at least putting out a warning 
> that the attribute needs to continue to work properly in all its host 
> languages, whereas, without a prefix, developers are likely to ignore 
> the impact on other languages, with it there will be some psychological 
> pressure not to do so.

This strikes me as completely incidental to the purpose of namespaces, 
which is to allow extensibility and blending of technologies.  That it 
might be used as a deterrent to feature drift by implementors is not its 
purpose... in fact, I dare say that it's as gross a misuse of the idea 
of namespaces as you are warning against.  Let's use namespaces for 
their original technical purpose, not as a line in the sand.

In any case, your rationale doesn't strike me as very plausible.  If 
implementors or developers want to extend a feature beyond its original 
purpose, they will... they already know it's specified somewhere; the 
actual spec in which it's done is unimportant.

Finally, @role is meant to be a point of extensibility anyway, so it's 
pretty ironic that you're discouraging developers from using it that way.

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Staff Contact, SVG, CDF, and WebAPI

Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2007 02:00:46 UTC