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Re: element markup in attributes

• From: Robin LaFontaine <robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:29:04 +0000

This looks very like the practice of using processing instructions to
show tracked changes, specifically deletions where the deleted info
(text and/or elements) is encoded in the PI data, for example:

<?oxy_delete author="deltaxml" timestamp="20100217T122251+0000"
content="&lt;p class='- topic/p'&gt;This paragraph appears only in
Version 1 and not in Version 2. &lt;/p&gt;"?>

There is a justification here that the deleted text does not appear in
the document and so the document can be validated OK. But in general it
is not good practice because it will fail at some point - for example
namespace handling. The multiple encoding of &amp;amp; in your example
also shows that it not nice.

I'd say that introducing such a mechanism is bad practice unless there
is literally no other way to achieve it. We have encoded attributes
(name and value) in attributes for our deltas but again that runs into
problems eventually so we moved away from it and put it back into
markup, i.e. elements.

Robin


Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> I hesitate a bit in raising questions about HTML5 here, mostly because 
> of concerns that the violence of that conversation will enter the 
> discussion here.  Nonetheless, this list is the best place I know of 
> to discuss markup best practices, and seems like the right place to 
> ask the question.
>
> The iframe element has always been a tricky critter, but in HTML5 it's 
> picked up a srcdoc attribute which "gives the content of the page that 
> the nested browsing context is to contain."  This allows the 
> construction of short documents in an iframe context without requiring 
> a separate HTTP request through the src attribute.
>
> Details can be found here:
>
> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/the-iframe-element.html>
> <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-iframe-element.html> 
>
>
> So what does this look like? Here are three examples from those specs.
>
> -----------------------------------
> <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>did you get a 
> cover picture yet?"></iframe>
>
> <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>Yeah, you can 
> see it <a href=&quot;/gallery?mode=cover&amp;amp;page=1&quot;>in my 
> gallery</a>."></iframe>
>
> <iframe seamless sandbox="allow-same-origin" srcdoc="<p>hey that's 
> earl's table.
> <p>you should get earl&amp;amp;me on the next cover."></iframe>
> -----------------------------------
>
> What do folks think?  Is this reasonable, given the use case, or is 
> this pushing too hard on attributes and escaping?
>
> I wonder if just letting iframe have child content would make more 
> sense, but I suspect that raises more compatibility problems with 
> older browsers.
>
> Thanks,


-- 
-- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Robin La Fontaine, Director, DeltaXML Ltd  "Change control for XML"
T: +44 1684 592 144  E: robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com
http://www.deltaxml.com
Registered in England 02528681 Reg. Office: Monsell House, WR8 0QN, UK

• References:
  • element markup in attributes
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>