[whatwg] [WA1] The profile Attribute
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Sun Apr 17 06:22:02 PDT 2005
On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, James Graham wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The only way I can see to avoid this is to use only one profile,
> > > > since then you can't ever get clashes.
> > >
> > > There are other ways I've seen proposed, such as using namespaces:
> > >
> > > http://www.protogenius.com/rel-schemas/draft-scheid-rel-schemas-00.htm
> >
> > Namespaces are not an option. Authors simply don't understand them.
>
> Respectfully, I think namespaces are the only sensible solution here and in
> other situations where the document is mixing semantics from multiple sources.
The recent microformats trend (using profile="") is one other solution,
which seems to be at least as sensible.
> What's the evidence that authors don't understand namespaces?
One source for example is Micah Dubinko's statistic that 90% of all the
queries about XForms that he receives are asking for him to explain
namespaces. [1]
[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/papers/verity.html
This certainly has also been my experience in dealing with Web authors who
are trying to use languages that rely on namespaces.
> Does it all come from XML namespaces (which are more complex than
> anything we would need for this type of problem*)? In any case I think
> this is a situation where, with sensible defaults, we can provide a
> useful feature that will be well within the grasp of the small subset of
> authors who actually want to use it.
By "namespaces" here I am refering to XML namespaces and similar solutions
that require declaring a prefix and then using that prefix elsewhere.
> For example we could define <profile name="foo"
> href="http://example.com/profiles/#foo" /> and then require a profile
> attribute for elements with rel values not assosiated with the default
> profile, which would be given by the value of the profile attribute in
> <head> or the last <profile> element with no <name> value. That seems
> much simpler than XML namespaces.
That seems a lot more complicated than the current proposed solution with
profile="".
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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