[whatwg] <base> versus xml:base

Martin Atkins mart at degeneration.co.uk
Wed Mar 14 13:37:20 PDT 2007 

Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:
> 
>> If it is, then when looking at links inside head, relative URIs are
>> resolved using a base of "bar/foo/bar/" (taking head at xml:base into
>> account twice: once to resolve base at href, which sets the document's
>> base URI, and then relative to that base URI to resolve link at href's).
> 
> Hm, that sounds weird. I'd say once base at href is resolved (taking into
> account the parent xml:base URI), then that's final. Any xml:base's after
> <base>'s presence will override the base, but I don't see a reason for
> applying xml:base twice. Since <base> is a special case element that
> magically affects all URI's in the document, I'd say it works like that
> even when combined with 'xml:base'.
> 

This kinda-cyclic definition is caused by the fact that the "base" 
element is defined as actually setting a property of the document as a 
whole.

So let's imagine that there's in illusionary element enclosing the whole 
document, so that we can write this in terms of xml:base...

So if we imagine that we've retrieved a document from http://example.com/:

<(document) xml:base="http://example.com/">

    <html>
    <head xml:base="foo/">
       <link href="bar.html" />
    </head>
    ...
    </html>

</(document)>

So here, that link ends up being http://example.com/foo/bar.html, 
because the xml:base on "head" is relative to the xml:base on the document.

Now if we throw in an HTML "base" element:

<(document) xml:base="???">

    <html>
    <head xml:base="foo/">
       <base href="wibble/" />
       <link href="bar.html" />
    </head>
    ...
    </html>

</(document)>

What is the document's xml:base set to now?

the "base" element overrides the original document URL, making it 
http://example.com/foo/wibble/, but since the xml:base on the document 
is now http://example.com/foo/wibble/, the base href is now 
http://example.com/foo/wibble/foo/wibble/ and so on ad infinitum.

So it seems to me that base href has to be a special case of some sort. 
I'm not sure what the special case should be. I think in this case I'd 
expect the notional xml:base on the document to be 
http://www.example.com/wibble/ and the URL in my "link" element to end 
up as http://www.example.com/wibble/foo/bar.html ... in other words, the 
base href has ignored xml:base entirely... the base href attribute is in 
effect acting as if it were the xml:base attribute on my imaginary 
"(document)" element, regardless of its actual position in the DOM.

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