[whatwg] [web-apps] 2.7.8 The i element

[James Graham]

Ian Hickson wrote:

> I am considering that we need some predefined class names. 

Yuck. This has several problems; it makes document semantics harder to 
parse (especially as an element may have multiple space seperated 
strings in the class attribute - substring matching in general is 
significantly harder than exact value matching), it could cause authors 
to unwittingly add inaccurate sematics to documents (by accidentially 
using a reserved class name) - which reduces the value for people who do 
use the resvered names correctly - and causes compatibility problems 
since valid HTML4 documents may use a now-reserved name.

Is there a good reason for reserved class names? I tend to believe that 
anything important enough to be included may as well be a tag. If we're 
looking to provide hooks for domain-specific microformats that should 
use a seperate mechanism (e.g. a special subType attribute or somesuch) 
with some provison for (pseudo)namespacing the microformat values (e.g. 
<link rel="subformat" href="http://example.com/#microformat" 
namespace="mf" /> and then e.g. <span subtype="mf:shipName">HMS 
Victory</span>).