[whatwg] Issues concerning the <base> element and xml:base

[Smylers]

Ian Hickson writes:

> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> 
> > > It seems like UAs should support a notification mechanism so that
> > > when a base URI is changed, all URIs in the document ...  or in
> > > that subtree ... get reresolved.
> > 
> > I have never heard of anyone that actually desired changing the base
> > uri for all or parts of a page dynamically.
> 
> I agree that it's a pretty dumb thing to do.

So it sounds like supporting it isn't necessary, and putting effort into
supporting it is a distraction.

> I'm not really sure how to unspecify that without adding a really
> weird clause like "in the event that the attribute is changed, user
> agents may, whenever convenient, pretend, for the sake of url
> resolution, that it has not changed".

Why is that weird?  Even if it is, why is being weird worse than
creating an implementation burden of something which nobody will use
(except by accident)?

Smylers