[whatwg] Solution to Repetition Model Template Problem

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
>     As you may already know, there's a serious problem with the current
> repetition system in Web Forms 2.0. The problem is that the template
> always shows up in non-WF2 UAs.

This actually isn't a problem. You just use the template as the initial
blank row in legacy UAs, with the "[id]" bit as the index of that row.
See, for instance, the example on the WHATWG site:

   http://whatwg.org/demos/repeat-01/


>     The current model looks like this:
>
>     <tr id="order" repeat="template">
>      <td><input type="text" name="row[order].product" value=""></td>
>      <td><input type="text" name="row[order].quantity" value="1"></td>
>     </tr>
>
>     The solution I propose would look like this:
>
>     <template id="order"><!--
>       <tr id="row[order]">
>        <td><input type="text" name="row[order].product" value=""></td>
>        <td><input type="text" name="row[order].quantity" value="1"></td>
>       </tr>
>     --></template>

We don't want to do that because it requires allowing the <template>
element anywhere (allowing an attribute anywhere is easy; allowing an
element anywhere is not). Also, it wouldn't work in XML, where the
comments can be dropped by the parser.

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