Robert Sayre wrote:
On 5/16/05, Bill de h�ra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robert Sayre wrote:
On 5/16/05, Bill de h�ra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I can think of a couple things. One would be collisions (which Sam mentioned).
I don't understand- maybe I'm looking at the wrong post?
http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg15236.html
Sam is saying that the IETF can't add a new element to the Atom namespace and be sure there would be no collision.
I still don't understand. Can't the IETF read their own specs?
The spec allows anyone to add stuff to the Atom namespace, so the IETF
will have to read everyone's documents before they add something to
the Atom namespace.
The spec does no such thing; that's a psychotic interpretation at best.
If people are going to add stuff to the Atom namespace, then they're going to add stuff to the Atom namespace, irrespective of what the spec says. Your options are to live with that or enforce the building of machinery that will reject the markup of people who do it. To build that machinery you'll have to have an ability to proof-check the markup. To proof-check the markup you have to have to ensure its legal names and their combinations can be enumerated at design time - at a minimum.
Maybe you folks are implying that collisions just aren't a problem.
If they are a problem, then they're universal to XML+namespaces. I'll argue we're not hear to solve that (possible) problem, even if we are responsible for choosing that technology to begin with.
One approach for minimising honest-john name collisions for attributes is to state that further added attributes be namespace qualified.
If we are still worried about unprefixed attributes, we can either ban them all except for the ones we have designed, or ban them all and place the ones we have inside the atom namespace. Either way, no further unprefixed attributes will be accepted by validators than the ones we mandate now.
I suppose if we're going to worry about this stuff, let's worry about these too:
- will it be hard for people to use atom attributes outside atom?
- will adding new attributes result in spec combination breakage a la the recent situations with new xml:* attributes?
[But personally speaking, I find this debate unimportant compared to consequences of say default namespaces and the introduction of xhtml:div]
Can validators catch typos or not? You seem to be saying they can't, but they did catch you adding an attribute called url.
I'm honestly not getting the gist of this issue, sorry.
If anyone can add unqualified attributes, how can the validator distinguish between a typo and an extension?
For non-optional attributes, a validator will pick up on a typo to non-optional attribute by way of the non-optional attribute not being there. *
Optional attributes can't easily be distinguished because you can't enumerate all of them in advance - formally, that would be a non-existence of bugs class problem. But as they're optional, it's not a disaster. If it is a disaster, we have a design problem first and foremost, not a validation problem.
cheers Bill
* barring statistically unfortunate events like a typing an attribute in once mistakenly and then typing it in correctly.
