Re: Shouldn't style be xml:style or xstyle:style ?

At 01:30 PM 10/27/00 +0200, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
>Ian Hickson wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
>> > The 'style' attribute already existing in XHTML, SVG, MathML, ...
>> > doesn't specify any namespace and has, since the default namespace
>> > doesn't apply to attributes, no namespace.
>> 
>> No. It doesn't have no namespace. An attribute without an explicit
>> namespace is owned by the element -- namespaces are irrelevant.
>
>I meant that the attribute has no namespace property.

It seems like the Working Draft is describing a 'global attribute' which
should have an explicit namespace property (like XLink attributes) to
interoperate among different vocabularies.  Instead, the draft leaves
vocabularies on their own recognizance for this one.

>> > IMHO, one should not be recommending to use an attribute without
>> > namespace to carry a semantical meaning to be used by tools.
>> 
>> There is no such thing as an attribute with no namespace, merely global
>> attributes and attributes particular to specific elements.
> 
>I find the notion of global attributes introduced in the NS spec very
>confusing (the so called global attributes are still attached to an
>element per the DOM, XPath and Infoset [4] specifications which does not
>even mention global attributes).

This is something that will take some sorting out.  I don't think xml-dev
even figured out that global attributes were a separate and somewhat weird
category until a few months after the spec had come out, and XLink was
really the first spec to make heavy use of them.

>The problem will probably occur more and more frequently in the future
>since a (re)modularization of common functions existing in different
>vocabularies is likely to happen and elements and attributes likely to
>migrate between namespaces !

Afraid so!  There's also a discussion on xml-dev about this right now:
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200010/threads.html#00935

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books

Received on Friday, 27 October 2000 11:07:05 UTC