[whatwg] Attribute for holding private data for scripting

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 8, 2007, at 11:12 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

> At http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/04/html_5.html PPK  
> suggests having an attribute for storing private data for scripts.
>
> Currently, one can invent an attribute and it will work for  
> scripts. However, it will look ugly for conformance checking. Since  
> this is essentially a conformance definition issue as browsers  
> would not be required to implement anything new (assuming a new  
> reflecting attribute on HTMLElement is deemed unnecessary), adding  
> an attribute for script-private data would be rather easy.
>
> I think it would be worthwhile to add an attribute for script- 
> private data to common attributes, so that scripters who need one  
> and want to be conforming don't need to abuse e.g. title.

The class attribute can already be used for script-private data. I  
think the time script authors go for made-up attributes is when they  
need a set of key-value pairs. Class is not so great for that, but  
I'm not sure any new attribute would be either, unless it provided  
some sort of built-in key-value parsing.

Regards,
Maciej