[whatwg] xml:lang and xmlns in HTML

[James Graham]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Robert Sayre wrote:
>> But it is a question, not a request. I don't want to request something 
>> that would be harmful. So, what is the downside of the example in that 
>> earlier email?
> 
> Well, SVG itself would arguably be bad because it is poor from a semantic 
> standpoint. However, as far as generic author-defined semantics go, that's 
> what the "class" attribute is for. Microformats.org, for example, use the 
> "class" attribute to introduce calendar semantics and the like into HTML. 
> You take the closest fitting HTML element, semantically, and then augment 
> it with your classes.

SVG is a pretty good example because (some) browsers _do_ support the 
SVG "semantics" (in the sense that they understand when to draw a 
circle, when to draw a path, etc.). I think a lot of people who are 
complaining at the moment might be happy if there was a possibly to do:

<svg subtreeNS="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<!-- SVG content here -->
</svg>

And similarly with say, MathML. I don't think there's anything desirable 
about calling the attribute xmlns because the semantics would differ 
from that attribute (it would only allow namespaces on a per-subtree basis).

I don't pretend to know how parsing would work though.

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