Hi, David-
ddailey wrote (on 10/16/10 9:39 PM):
>
> I know that
> R.setAttributeNS(null,"fill", "red")is the proper construction (for SVG
> but not HTML), rather than
Actually, that works with any XML language, XHTML included (provided it
is real XHTML, and not served as text/html).
> R.setAttribute("fill", "red")I also know that in every SVG viewer I have
> seen, the latter has equivalent behavior to the former (for SVG but not
> HTML), .
Both are fine for SVG; they are equivalent in this case. The only place
they are not equivalent is when the attribute is in a separate
namespace, as with xlink:href; then, unfortunately, setAttributeNS is
needed. Another example of namespaced attributes is certain metadata
attributes, or custom attributes; both Illustrator and Inkscape produce
these, so it's good to have a grounding in them for advanced SVG stuff.
But in this case, the only thing to know there is that (for whatever
reason) attributes are generally in the 'null' namespace (*not* in the
SVG or HTML or whatever host-language namespace). I recommend teaching
setAttribute for normal attributes, and setAttributeNS only for xlink:href.
(Note that a younger me was rather outspoken about using setAttributeNS,
as I thought it clarified the subtleties of namespaces through making
them explicit. I no longer feel that way, and think that people should
do what is easiest; there is a little pain involved in learning
namespaces, and as much as possible, we should remove that pain. Bad
Younger Me, no cookie.)
> I think I was told once that the SVG spec (or maybe it is the XML spec, or
> one or another DOM spec), for some mysterious reason, leaves room for some
> future browser manufacturer to make a browser in which the latter
> construction wouldn't work.
I don't believe any spec says so, but even if it does, that's not going
to happen. The current trend is for increased API simplicity, so newer
specs and existing browsers will not go that way. setAttribute is safe
and future-proof.
Hope that helps-
-Doug
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