Re: MathML-in-HTML5

On 4/10/2006 11:28 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Roger B. Sidje wrote:
> 
>>On 4/10/2006 10:38 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>
>>>The proposal that I understand Roger intends to experiment with is making
>>>any tag in a particular list of tags be added to the DOM as a node not in
>>>the XHTML namespace but in the MathML namespace.
>>
>>The simpler <math xmlns="...">...</math> would make life much easier, as
>>- it would avoid listing all the possible tags up-front
>>- gives parity with IE+MathPlayer out-of-the-box.
>>- future proof.
>>
>>Perhaps xmlns could be an exceptional attribute.
> 
> 
> There are millions of pages that have bogus xmlns="" attributes on various 
> tags. If we started doing things with those attributes, those pages would 
> break. That's not an option. I haven't studied IE closely enough to know 
> exactly what it's doing, but it isn't as simple as simply handling an 
> xmlns="" attribute on any tag.

Even if the exceptional circumstance is made more specific? There is 
probably zero page with the specific attribute-value pair
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">

> More importantly, xmlns="" isn't simple. Authors have huge issues with 
> anything like namespaces.

I would guess that MathML authors/generators would be comfortable with 
that. More importantly, the sure guarantee would be the absence of any 
rendering on the screen... (With that, they can't forget.)
---
RBS

Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2006 01:49:17 UTC