Re: [css3-namespace] what is a "no namespace"

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:57:53 +0100, Christof Hoeke <csad7@t-online.de>  
wrote:
> This is more or less the issue which the XML Namespace specification  
> would prevent. Defining a namespace with the empty string as  
> namespaceURI is not allowed in XML...

It is in XML 1.1. And there's talk of backporting that to 1.0. Anyway,  
what makes you think this is an issue?


>>  No. By default type selectors match elements in every namespace.
>
> Is that really how it works? If browsers would match elements in "every  
> namespace" browsers would not handle namespaces as defined by the spec?  
> (or am I too confused this evening?)

Seems like you are.


> I somehow assumed as you write later that Browsers somehow use something  
> like
>
>  @namespace "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>
> for XHTML files. For HTML not using namespaces they use more or less
>
>  @namespace ""
>
> (in this case the empty string is even allowed in XML but it also hardly  
> makes any sense at all as there is only the empty namespace anyway if  
> one could call it that here)

Not really. Browsers that have "ua.css" file use @namespace  
"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; for both HTML and XHTML. But that's  
besides the point. We're talking about author style sheets here.


>>  Note that most browsers, for CSS purposes at least, already act as if  
>> HTML elements are in the http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace.
>
> (this is what I tried to summarize above)

You claimed something about @namespace "" ...


>>> I guess I'm looking for information about how this is applied along  
>>> with the syntactic description.
>>
>> Why? It's pretty self-evident. (If the namespaces concept of XML  
>> namespaces is itself not clear, which seems to be the problem here, I  
>> suggest simply not bothering with them. Namespaces are hardly relevant  
>> on the Web anyway.)
>
> (I guess they are relevant if you have something like ATOM embedded in  
> XHTML or are also useful if you like to style a SVG element embedded in  
> XHTML (very useful when using Prince-XML). But you are of course right  
> that most websites work just without.)

Atom in XHTML?! SVG and XHTML work perfectly together without needing the  
namespace support of CSS.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2008 19:03:09 UTC