[whatwg] Allowed characters in attribute names (was: Re: Steps for finding one or two numbers in a string)

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Simon Pieters wrote:
> 
> Since attribute names that use characters outside ASCII aren't parse 
> errors, and any attribute is allowed on the embed element, the 
> definition of "Attribute names" in #writing is incorrect.

Fixed.


> Although that isn't quite right either. The parsing section allows 
> attributes to begin with =. Given the following markup:
> 
>   <a =="">
> 
> Safari, Opera and Firefox drop the attribute. IE has an attribute with 
> the name being the empty string and the value being ="". The HTML5 
> parsing spec says that there should be an attribute with the name = and 
> the value the empty string. The "Before attribute name state" part of 
> the parsing spec might have to be revisited.

I don't see any harm in leaving the spec as-is here, given the lack of 
interoperability and the fact that there's no real reason to be using 
attributes with this name anyway. Whatever's simplest to implement is 
probably best here.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'