Re: [whatwg] The problems with namespaces in text/html (Was: MathML-in-HTML5)

[dolphinling]

Ian Hickson wrote:
I'm not saying don't add MathML to HTML. I'm saying don't add namespace syntax to HTML. 


Is this feasible? As much as I'd like this for ease of use, at some point or 
other when enough things have been added to html, there will be conflicts. 
Namespaces seem like the only way to avoid those conflicts, and there needs to 
be some way of representing those namespaces.


Ian Hickson wrote:

In browsers today, the following:

... 

...is just a link. If we start supporting xmlns="" as it works in XML, but 
in HTML, then literally millions of pages are going to suddenly have their 
links stop working, because  in the "" namespace (as opposed to the 
XHTML namespace), is not an HTML , and thus isn't a link.


I've seen hundreds of thousands of occurances of bogus meaningless things 
like this:


   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40";>

...as well as many thousands of pages with xmlns="" values pointing to 
their own sites (as opposed to any sort of half-sensible namespace).


Some pages even have completely bogus namespaces on the root  
element, which would make the entire page screw up. Even worse, Office 
HTML, of which there is a LOT on the Web, uses namespaces in a way to 
trigger IE to do one thing, but relies on the other browsers *not* 
handling the namespaces to make sure it all works everywhere. (Like I said 
earlier, I've worked with one browser vendor who tried implementing this 
namespace thing before, and had to back out because it broke real content 
in pretty fundamental ways.)


OUCH.

Is the list of bogus namespaces relatively confined? Would it be technically 
feasible to enumerate the worst ones and say "ignore these"?



Are there any reasons besides ease of use and misuse in tag-soup content that 
XML's namespace syntax shouldn't be added to HTML?


--
dolphinling

Re: [whatwg] [WebForms2] custom form validation notifications

[Joao Eiras]

Matthew Paul Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escreveu:


On Oct 4, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Brad Fults wrote:


On 10/3/06, Joao Eiras <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

...
If the user fills a form in an improper way the UA should alert him of  
the problems. Opera in the early days of its initial web forms support  
showed an alert box stating that the information was invalid, now it  
flashes the input field, and presents a message overlapped in the  
webpage. However it presents a very generic error message like "You  
must set a value!" (for required) or "foo is not in the format this  
page requires" (for pattern). The author may want, in the case of an  
error, to present its custom error message to the end user. This could  
be achieved by declaring new custom attribute for the several  
controls, which could hold the message. The UA could then either pop  
up that message to the user or embed it in the page (like Opera does
currently). The attribute could be named like requirederr, patternerr,  
or use some other sort of naming convention to easily associate the  
constraining property with the message attribute.


As UAs become more sophisticated, they can analyze the pattern attribute  
and present more context-sensitive error messages than any such  
attribute could. For example:

*   "410 is too much; this number must be 300 or less."
*   "178 is too small; this number must be 200 or more."
*   "This field must start with a letter."

UAs can also localize these error messages much more extensively than  
any Web site could (which will be even more of a benefit when the Web  
site is not in your preferred language).


Of course. Such features are very useful, although such behaviours are
user-agent defined.
But that's not the point: my original message is related to
customizablility.


Is the use of the title attribute inappropriate for this case?
...


It has the same lack of context.

Re: [whatwg] [WebForms2] custom form validation notifications

[Joao Eiras]

Matthew Paul Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escreveu:


On Oct 4, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Brad Fults wrote:


On 10/3/06, Joao Eiras <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

...
If the user fills a form in an improper way the UA should alert him of  
the problems. Opera in the early days of its initial web forms support  
showed an alert box stating that the information was invalid, now it  
flashes the input field, and presents a message overlapped in the  
webpage. However it presents a very generic error message like "You  
must set a value!" (for required) or "foo is not in the format this  
page requires" (for pattern). The author may want, in the case of an  
error, to present its custom error message to the end user. This could  
be achieved by declaring new custom attribute for the several  
controls, which could hold the message. The UA could then either pop  
up that message to the user or embed it in the page (like Opera does
currently). The attribute could be named like requirederr, patternerr,  
or use some other sort of naming convention to easily associate the  
constraining property with the message attribute.


As UAs become more sophisticated, they can analyze the pattern attribute  
and present more context-sensitive error messages than any such  
attribute could. For example:

*   "410 is too much; this number must be 300 or less."
*   "178 is too small; this number must be 200 or more."
*   "This field must start with a letter."

UAs can also localize these error messages much more extensively than  
any Web site could (which will be even more of a benefit when the Web  
site is not in your preferred language).


Of course. Such features are very useful, although such behaviours are  
user-agent defined.
But that's not the point: my original message is related to  
customizablility.



Is the use of the title attribute inappropriate for this case?
...


It has the same lack of context.

Re: [whatwg] [WebForms2] custom form validation notifications

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Oct 4, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Brad Fults wrote:


On 10/3/06, Joao Eiras <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

...
If the user fills a form in an improper way the UA should alert him 
of the problems. Opera in the early days of its initial web forms 
support showed an alert box stating that the information was invalid, 
now it flashes the input field, and presents a message overlapped in 
the webpage. However it presents a very generic error message like 
"You must set a value!" (for required) or "foo is not in the format 
this page requires" (for pattern). The author may want, in the case 
of an error, to present its custom error message to the end user. 
This could be achieved by declaring new custom attribute for the 
several controls, which could hold the message. The UA could then 
either pop up that message to the user or embed it in the page (like 
Opera does
currently). The attribute could be named like requirederr, 
patternerr, or use some other sort of naming convention to easily 
associate the constraining property with the message attribute.


As UAs become more sophisticated, they can analyze the pattern 
attribute and present more context-sensitive error messages than any 
such attribute could. For example:

*   "410 is too much; this number must be 300 or less."
*   "178 is too small; this number must be 200 or more."
*   "This field must start with a letter."

UAs can also localize these error messages much more extensively than 
any Web site could (which will be even more of a benefit when the Web 
site is not in your preferred language).



Is the use of the title attribute inappropriate for this case?
...


It has the same lack of context.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/