[webkit-dev] New feature announcement - Implement HTML5 Microdata in WebKit

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, Dean Jackson wrote:
> 
> However, isn't prefixing designed to avoid incompatibilities in spec 
> changes, not incompatibilities between implementations? Ensuring no 
> conflicts in implementations doesn't matter too much if the spec 
> changes.

It's designed to ensure that authors can reliably use a name and expect to 
get the same result in any UA that supports that name.

I'm not going to change the spec in a way that conflicts with that -- if 
the spec has to change, it'll change either in a compatible way (e.g. to 
match what was actually implemented), or in a way that doesn't conflict 
(e.g. by changing the name in the spec).


> Note I'm not talking about Microdata in particular. I don't even know 
> what that spec is :) I'm just talking about the general approach. If the 
> world can guarantee that this spec will never change, then I guess your 
> technique works.
> 
> FWIW, there is an in-between approach, which is the one used by WebGL. 
> It defines a prefix that all implementations share.
> 
> canvas.getContext("experimental-webgl");

That'll just result in that name becoming the standard.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'