[whatwg] Private class names (was "several messages about HTML5")

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-02-21 à 4:41, Gervase Markham a écrit :

> Surely it would make much more sense to have all the predefined  
> class names start with a dash? After all, XHTML5 is not yet  
> standardised, whereas people have been using all sorts of random  
> class names for years - but, I suspect, mostly without a leading dash.

You're proposing something that looks like the path of less  
resistance for adoption of the spec. While this is certainly worth  
something, it also happen to be the path of less intensive to use the  
predefined class names, or to register new ones when you need one,  
since private-domain class names would be prettier and easier to type  
than the standardised ones. Beside, it would also make it impossible  
to register class names currently in use by microformats.

Because of all that, I think it makes more sense that the private  
domain be the one that starts with a dash. There is also the benefit  
that you can create a similar private domain for link types (for the  
rel attribute).

By the way I know the current predefined class model is lacking in  
certain areas, most notably it makes clashes inevitable (although how  
much this is a problem is still open for debate). It could certainly  
be scrapped altogether in the future, but in the meanwhile I want to  
improve it little by little. Maybe with enough incremental  
improvements like this one it'll become good enough for a majority of  
people.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/