[whatwg] A Selector-based metadata proposal

Fri May 22 08:10:18 PDT 2009

On Fri, 22 May 2009 16:44:32 +0200, Toby Inkster <mail at tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 12:26 +0200, Eduard Pascual wrote:
>> Are you calling the DOM Consistency Principle a "theoretical" or
>> "aesthetic" argument?
>
> Certainly not -- DOM consistency is a great idea. But given that the
> HTML5 spec defines how the DOM is built, there's a very simple solution
> to that -- HTML5 could simply mandate that:
>
> 	<html xmlns:foo="http://foo.example.com/">
>
> generates an identical DOM representation in both XHTML5 and HTML5.
> What's the problem with that?

People doing e.g.

  [xmlns\:foo] { ... }

in CSS and expecting it to function.

ECMAScript libraries doing

  var x = getAttributeNS("", "xmlns:foo")

and expecting it to function.

 * It's not clear how common either scenario is.
 * There are probably more ways to exploit the difference besides what I listed.
 * It might make people think that <foo:bar> style elements would work. (I believe we're reasonably sure this would break things.)
 * It might make people think that <x foo:bar=""> style attributes would work. (I believe we're reasonably sure this would break things too.)
 * ...

(Not sure what this has to do with Selectors by the way.)

-- 
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/