On May 25, 2005, at 1:40 PM, David Powell wrote:
What is section 6.3 "unknown foreign markup" for?
I think the notion of foreign markup exists so that we can write the
extremely-important section 6.3, our MustIgnore assertion. The point
is, either software knows what to do with an extension and does it,
or if not it's not allowed to to break and should pass text through
in contentful contexts. -Tim
* We have content constructs which are extensible by allowing any type
of data to be embedded using the IANA registry of MIME types.
* We have carefully designed an IANA registry for @rel values, and
used
the distributed nature of namespace URIs to allow for unregistered
values.
* We have carefully defined two classes of extension construct (Simple
and Structured) to ensure that extensions are disambiguated by
namespace URIs, and that xml:lang issues are considered. Simple
extensions make generic support for this class of extension feasible
for real-world implementations; Structured extensions are there for
those that need the extra power.
And, we have "unknown foreign markup".
I believed that the purpose of "unknown foreign markup" was to define
an error handling strategy for parsers, and to give the spec a bit of
breathing room for things like Atom 1.1. This is great.
But I'm getting a sneaking suspicion though, that "unknown foreign
markup" is positioning itself as a third (poorly thought through)
class of extension point.
Please tell me that that isn't the intent?
In the future someone said:
Hey, I've had an idea for an extension to atom:link. The text
content
of atom:link could be a tooltip giving a long description for the
link
It would work like this:
<atom:link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/dave";>
This is a picture of my holiday. I'm the one on the right.
</atom:link>
What do you think?
In the future someone said:
Hey, I've had an idea for an extension to atom:link. The text
content
of atom:link could be a GUID of an ActiveX control that is capable of
displaying the linked object. It would work like this:
<atom:link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/dave";>
0A28AB31-3143-4b70-B969-8650BDFDBAC9
</atom:link>
What do you think?
--
Dave
