[whatwg] The problems with namespaces in text/html (Was: MathML-in-HTML5)

Anne van Kesteren fora at annevankesteren.nl
Mon Oct 9 06:33:55 PDT 2006


On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:24:57 +0200, Robert <mail at robbiegee.com> wrote:
> How about defining a standard namespace _prefix_ for such additions to  
> HTML? As far as I've seen, all browsers interpret the namespace prefix  
> as part of the tag/attribute, such that for MATHML in HTML, you'd use  
> <math:add>. It'd require the author use the prefix for all relevant  
> tags, but it should work without changing anything fundamental in UAs  
> that might break other sites. As far as I'm aware, since namespaces  
> don't exist in HTML there's nothing particularily "evil" about this.

This seems much more annoying to author than the proposed alternative.

It's not like we'll have millions of elements to be used in HTML one day.  
(I hope not, at least!) The language should remain relatively simple. I'm  
not even sure why people suggest SVG should be included as well as that's  
a presentational language. It makes much more sense to bind SVG to  
elements using XBL.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>




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