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 <kar...@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.
