[whatwg] output element

Jim Ley jim at jibbering.com
Sat Jun 12 17:13:37 PDT 2004


The output element is all rather confused, you say:

| Its namespace is the same as for the other form control elements,
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

Yet, earlier in the document you state this is an extension to HTML 4.01,
elements in SGML don't have a namespace?  Even for XHTML 1.0, does the
WHATWG have change control over the namespace? If not then this is clearly a
non-starter, XHTML has a defined mechanism for extending it with other
elements, and you cannot just add elements to the namespace you don't
concern.   As I'm sure those members of the WHATWG also concerned with CSS
would be the first to concede when other WG's write changes to the spec all
you get is an incompatible mess.  Please use an appropriate XHTML reference,
or better still just stop all the XHTML pretense and just create an SGML
based dtd where this mess won't matter.

You say that the output element is very much like a span element, but then
go on to talk about defaultValue's without specifying what happens to child
elements of the output element: e.g. what does:

<output><em>Oops</em></output>

give?

Is it really like a span element?

Jim.







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