Re: sXBL draft comments

"Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch> wrote in message 
news:Pine.LNX.4.61.0409041034190.9548@dhalsim.dreamhost.com...
> That's just one of many use cases for XBL. Web component technologies
> (HTCs, Mozilla XBL) existed long before XForms, and the primary use case
> for them is creating new HTML form controls, in an environment with no
> XPath support, but strong (CSS) Selectors support.

Could you list where I might find these primary use cases?  A requirements 
doc or something, it strikes me as rather odd to have a primary use case 
defined that overrides to me what are much more persuasive use cases in 
visualisation of structured data (in HTML as much as in SVG)  I realise the 
history of the technology may be as you describe, but that is just the 
history of it.

> XBL is also aimed at HTML authors who may not be sufficiently savvy to
> master rudimentary SVG skills. :-)

The stupid authors already have plentiful options for creating HTML forms - 
indeed there's a whole specification being developed for them, I hardly see 
it as logicial to hobble yet more specifications based on this rather 
limited use set.  Especially as I would've thought XBL as a reusable 
component language from tool vendors is a larger use case than the stupid 
author.

> CSS Selectors has the advantage in such environments that it has been
> specifically designed to be fast to implement.

Could you explain how two identical selectors in a different syntax, one is 
faster than the other?  Or do you mean for certain common use cases there 
are convenient shortcuts in CSS 3 that are not there in XPATH?  Could you 
list a few?

Jim. 

Received on Saturday, 4 September 2004 16:55:59 UTC