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

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, Robert wrote:
> >
> > In browsers today, the following:
> >    <a href="test" xmlns=""> ... </a>
> > ...is just a link. If we start supporting xmlns="" as it works in XML, but
> > in HTML, then literally millions of pages are going to suddenly have their
> > links stop working, because <a> in the "" namespace (as opposed to the XHTML
> > namespace), is not an HTML <a>, and thus isn't a link.
> 
> 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.

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> 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.

I tend to agree with Anne. It's not clear to me what the advantage of the 
proposed solution would be. It's not really clear to me what the problem 
is, even.

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