[whatwg] foreign attributes Re: several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Karl Dubost wrote:
> > 
> > Bogus attributes end up in the DOM but have no other requirements on
> > processing, so, they are ignored. The spec covers this.
> 
> Could you give the pointer in the document?

A pointer to what? They end up in the DOM because of:

> Attribute name state
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#attribute1

...as you cited. There aren't any other requirements, I can't point to the 
lack of something. :-)


> So if they are just ignored, I guess that leaves full room for people to 
> extend the document with other attributes.

Um, no, that would be non-conformant, and would make it extremely hard to 
extend the language ourselves in the future.


> > > A group with a need of specific attribute might want to add new
> > > attributes to Web Apps 1.0.
> > > - What are the extensions mechanims for this?
> 
> I was talking about attributes, not class that I'm well aware of :)

The extension mechanism in HTML is the class attribute. Attributes are how 
semantics (including the class attribute) are expressed in HTML. You don't 
add new proprietary attributes or elements, you add new features. Those 
features are added through "class" (and "rel", "profile", etc).


> Yes I perfectly know it. Microformats offer some solutions for simple 
> cases, but request heavy parsing sometimes and some other groups have 
> specific needs.

Could you elaborate on this?

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