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Bug 11261 - Bogus reference to CDATA attributes
Summary: Bogus reference to CDATA attributes
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LC1 HTML/XHTML Compatibility Authoring Guide (ed: Eliot Graff) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Eliot Graff
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-11-08 11:47 UTC by James Clark
Modified: 2011-08-04 05:07 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description James Clark 2010-11-08 11:47:37 UTC 
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-xhtml-author-guide/html-xhtml-authoring-guide.html#attributes

says

"polyglot markup does not contain tabs, line feeds, or carriage returns within CDATA attributes"

I am not sure what is meant by "CDATA attributes" here. HTML5 doesn't seem to have any such concept, and for XHTML it is DTD-dependent.

My understanding is that the HTML5 DOM contains the unnormalized attribute value of all attributes. Thus this should say "attribute values" not "CDATA attributes".  However, this does not make clear whether you are talking about the DOM or the characters of the XML document.

How about "tabs, line feeds and carriage returns in attribute values MUST be represented by numeric character references and not by literal characters"?
Comment 1 Eliot Graff 2010-12-09 00:37:16 UTC 
Hi James.

If I change the opening of the "attributes" section to the following, will it speak to your concerns?

Within a CDATA section, polyglot markup represents tabs, line feeds, and carriage returns as numeric character references rather than by using literal characters. For example, within a CDATA section, polyglot markup uses 	 for a tab rather than the literal character '\t'. This is because of attribute-value normalization in XML [XML10]. 

Thanks for your feedback and patience.

Eliot
Comment 2 James Clark 2010-12-09 01:59:04 UTC 
No, that would make no sense at all. This is about attributes not CDATA sections.
Comment 3 Eliot Graff 2010-12-09 16:06:59 UTC 
(In reply to comment #2)
> No, that would make no sense at all. This is about attributes not CDATA
> sections.

ACK. That's what I get for trying to get too much done yesterday.

Will this work for you?

Within an attribute's value, polyglot markup represents tabs, line feeds, and
carriage returns as numeric character references rather than by using literal
characters. For example, within an attribute's value, polyglot markup uses 	 for a tab rather than the literal character '\t'. This is because of
attribute-value normalization in XML [XML10]. 


</ excruciating-embarassment>

Thanks.

E
Comment 4 Eliot Graff 2010-12-09 19:49:03 UTC 
The following text is now in the Editor's Draft of the spec:

Within an attribute's value, polyglot markup represents tabs, line feeds, and carriage returns as numeric character references rather than by using literal characters. For example, within an attribute's value, polyglot markup uses &#x9; for a tab rather than the literal character '\t'. This is because of attribute-value normalization in XML [XML10]. 

Thanks for your help.

Eliot
Comment 5 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:07:08 UTC 
mass-move component to LC1
Comment 6 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:07:31 UTC 
mass-move component to LC1