[whatwg] href synonyms?

[David Dailey]

There are likewise annoying things in SVG. xlink:href="#Q" , attributeName="url(#Q)" etc. Every time I go to use a gradient, a pattern, a use, a filter, a clipPath, or a mask, I have to look up, in the manual, which notation happens to be used for this particular thing. I'm sure there may have been historic logic, but the pain for the developer results in lost productivity. Agreed that developers would still need to know an antiquated illogic, but over time, wouldn't the world become a better place?

400 hours of implementers' time now is probably hard to justify, perhaps, given that the return on this investment would come in zillions of developers' microseconds harvested over years. 

Cheers
David

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org [mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Ian Hickson
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 3:45 PM
To: Roger Hågensen; Nils Dagsson Moskopp; Aryeh Gregor
Cc: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
Subject: Re: [whatwg] href synonyms?

On Thu, 9 Dec 2010, Roger H�gensen wrote:
>
> This has irked me lately...
> 
>    * <a> uses /href/ (outbound)
>    * <link> uses /href/ (inbound and outbound)
>    * <img> uses /src/ (inbound)
>    * <iframe> uses /src/ (inbound)
>    * <script> uses /src/ (inbound)
>    * <embed> uses /src/ (inbound)
>    * <object> uses /data/ (inbound)
>    * <applet> uses /code/ (inbound)
>    *   css @import (inbound)
>    * I'm sure I missed some more that should be listed here too.
> 
> It seems like in all cases these are simply a URI, and whether it takes 
> you to some place or if it loads in something is purely contextual. So 
> why not spec all those to simply be synonyms for href (which is used 
> both for inbound and outbound).

Because that would add extra complexity to browsers and the spec without 
really simplifying the language much (since authors would still have to 
know about the synonyms to be able to edit older pages or pages written by 
other people).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'