[whatwg] namespaces in html5

[David Karger]

Yes, we could,  but it doesn't address the two objections I raised to 
data- prefix:
1.  it isn't actually a data attribute, so prefixing with data seems 
odd (appearance; minor)
2.  there's no way to guarantee someone else won't use the same 
data-exhibit prefix, causing incompatibilities (functionality; major)

On Monday, July 18, 2011 5:28:44 PM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:22:42 +0200, David Karger <karger at mit.edu> wrote:
>> Another approach would be to use the catchall html5 data- prefix for 
>> attributes. We could certainly prefix all of our specialized 
>> attributes with the data- prefix, which would turn those attributes 
>> valid for html. This solution is unsatisfactory for two reasons. The 
>> first is that our attributes are not data attributes----we are not 
>> using microformat-oriented data attributes; rather, we are using 
>> attributes that describe visualizations. data- seems a poor choice of 
>> prefix. The second problem that concer
ns me is attribute collisions. 
>> If we use an attribute like data-role="view", how long will it be 
>> before an exhibit author runs into a situation where a different 
>> javascript library is using the same data-role attribute for a 
>> different purpose, which would make the two libraries incompatible 
>> with one another?
> 
> You could use data-exhibit-* as the specification suggests. Potentially 
> including the ability for the web author to override the "exhibit" 
> constant.