Is this introducing incompatibilities with future W3C work? (Was: [whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 Editorial [minor] Abstract -> Section 2)

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
>
> So it is the intention of Web Forms 2.0 to extend the XHTML namespace,
> not caring that the WHATWG do not have change control over that
> namespace and specifically introducing incompatibilities with any future
> XHTML specification the W3C may wish to introduce?

Yes, pretty much. However, that is highly unlikely to be an issue since
the HTML Working Group chairman has stated that XHTML2 is the way forward
as far as the W3C is concerned (and XHTML2 has its own namespace).

Note that there is nothing worse about extending XHTML1's namespace than
there is over extending HTML4. The W3C could just as easily want to extend
HTML4. And note that the way that UAs have implemented XHTML1 there is no
real difference between the two -- all the HTML extensions such as
<marquee> work just as well in XML documents using XHTML's namespace as in
HTML document in UAs that support both.

Similarly, DOM extensions such as the extremely popular "as used by GMail"
object XMLHttpRequest polute the DOM namespace in the same way.

Since the WHATWG project was formed out of the W3C's reluctance to extend
the XHTML1, HTML4, and DOM namespaces in this way, it doesn't seem likely
that any of this will cause a problem.

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