119317 - inherits should be xbl:inherits

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XBL, defect)

Description

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

This was just a funny idea that struck me, so feel free to mark it invalid if 
you don't agree:

The current "inherits" attribute looks kind of strange to me. It looks like a 
normal attribute targeted at the element it lives in, but in fact it's a 
special xbl-attribute targeted at the xbl-engine. This also makes it cumbersome 
(impossible?) to add an attribute called "inherits" to the generated element.

So my suggestion is that the attribute is placed in the xbl-namespace. So

<html:input inherits="onfocus"/>

becomes

<html:input xbl:inherits="onfocus"/>

That way it is clear that the attribute has a special meaning related to xbl, 
and we get no collisions with "inherits" attributes on the element. No syntax 
changes needed, just add the "xbl:" prefix and add a 
xmlns:xbl="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl" mapping at the top of the file.

Comment 1

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Attachment: use xbl:inherits and fallbacks to inherits

Here goes a patch that uses xbl:inherits and fallbacks to inherits if it
doesn't exist. There is some code that unsets the attribute, however it's
out-commented. I changed it (but didn't create any fallback code) in case it is
uncommented sometime.

Once this is in the tree i'll start search-n-replacing in the xbl

Comment 2

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

oh, btw, i found a "inheritstyle" attribute in the code, but i couldn't find 
anything in the spec about how it works. Should it be moved to the xbl 
namespace too?

Comment 3

[David Hyatt]

sr=hyatt

Comment 4

[John Keiser (jkeiser)]

Comment on attachment 65171 [details] [diff] [review]
use xbl:inherits and fallbacks to inherits

r=jkeiser

Comment 5

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 65171 [details] [diff] [review]
use xbl:inherits and fallbacks to inherits

checked in

Comment 6

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Attachment: move over all uses of inherits to xbl:inherits. Also add an assertion for inherits

The patches changes all uses in the tree from inherits to xbl:inherits. It also
adds an assertion for uses of plain inherits=".." to speed up the transition.
1.0 is comming awfully fast and i'd like to remove support for the old syntax
before then.

When appling this patch we start running into assertions since html elements
can't handle namespaced attributes. That is bug 41983 which hopefully should be
fixed pretty soon. Not sure if we should remove the assertions for now or just
hold checking this in until bug 41983 is fixed. (I would rather not wait too
long though)

Comment 7

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

turns out that those assertions were pretty bad, we have to land bug 41983 
before all uses can be switched over. If that takes too long i'll make a patch 
that changes all elements except html ones.

Taking the bug since i have the patches

Comment 8

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Attachment: replace all inherits except the ones in html-elements

this patch changes all inherits to xbl:inherits except for the ones in
html-elements. It also doesn't add the assertion. I'd be great if we could land
this right away since bug 41983 might take a while before it lands.

Comment 9

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Comment on attachment 73310 [details] [diff] [review]
replace all inherits except the ones in html-elements

r=hixie

I especially like the minor whitespace fixups you did at the same time. :-)

Comment 10

[David Hyatt]

sr=hyatt

Comment 11

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 73310 [details] [diff] [review]
replace all inherits except the ones in html-elements

a=asa (on behalf of drivers) for checkin to the 1.0 branch

Comment 12

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 73310 [details] [diff] [review]
replace all inherits except the ones in html-elements

checked in on trunk and 1.0-branch

Comment 13

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Attachment: final stage

removes support for old "inherits" syntax and fixes the last few uses

Comment 14

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Comment on attachment 81901 [details] [diff] [review]
final stage

r=hixie

Comment 15

[Håkan Waara]

Are we sure we want to *remove* backwards-compatibility altogether for this
(probably commonly-used) syntax for XBL?  I bet there are a lot of people out
using XBL that this will break.

Comment 16

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

if we don't remove the old support it will still be problematic (although not 
impossible) for people wanting to create attributes named "inherits", which was 
one of the reasons for this bug in the first place.

We've done the same for XUL and XBL in the past and announcements has been done 
in all proper channels. I've even contacted some people personally.

Comment 17

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Attachment: same as above but for the 1.0 branch

the differences between the trunk and the branch was bigger then I though. This
does the same as attachment 81901 [details] [diff] [review] but for checkin to the branch

Comment 18

[David Hyatt]

Comment on attachment 81901 [details] [diff] [review]
final stage

sr=hyatt

Comment 19

[Fabian Guisset]

Comment on attachment 81920 [details] [diff] [review]
same as above but for the 1.0 branch

r=fabian

Comment 20

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 81901 [details] [diff] [review]
final stage

checked in on trunk

Comment 21

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

IMO this is quite important for 1.0 since XBL is a pretty well-used API

Comment 22

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Yes, we want this.  Hyatt says "hell yes", so his sr= carries over.  :-)

/be

Comment 23

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Comment on attachment 81920 [details] [diff] [review]
same as above but for the 1.0 branch

sr=hyatt, a=brendan for the 1.0 branch -- someone please check in ASAP and say
so here.

/be

Comment 24

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 81920 [details] [diff] [review]
same as above but for the 1.0 branch

commited to branch

Comment 25

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

This one should now be fully fixed. Serached all .xml files for [^:]inherits and
everything looks ok. (I did this *before* checking in of course :-) )