+> So, are you saying that getting a field value is sort of a two-stage process? Get the value from anywhere, and then call the "security processor" for that namespace to "secure" the value? I think "namespaces" are really orthogonal to this issue. What the issue seems to be is:
+
+ * what form do we expect the raw field to be in? (text, URL, HTML)
+ * what form do we expect the "secured" output to be in? (raw HTML, scrubbed HTML, escaped HTML, URL)
+
+> Only if we know both these things will we know what sort of security processing needs to be done.
+
+>> Fieldsets are orthogonal to the security issue in the sense that you can use
+>> them without worrying about the field security issue, but they happen to be
+>> a rather clean way of answering those two questions, by allowing you to
+>> attach preprocessing attributes to a field in a way that the user
+>> (supposedly) cannot mingle with.
+
+> There is also a difference between field values that are used inside pagetemplate, and field values which are used as part of a page's content (e.g. with ftemplate). If you have a TITLE, you want it to be HTML-escaped if you're using it inside pagetemplate, but you don't want it to be HTML-escaped if you're using it inside a page's content. On the other hand, if you have, say, FEEDLINKS used inside pagetemplate, you don't wish it to be HTML-escaped at all, or your page content will be completely stuffed.
+
+>> Not to talk about the many different ways date-like fields might be need
+>> processing. It has already been proposed to solve this problem by exposing
+>> the field values under different names depending on the kind or amout of
+>> postprocessing they had (e.g. RAW_SOMEFIELD, SOMEFIELD, to which we could add
+>> HTML_SOMEFIELD, URL_SOMEFIELD or whatever). Again, fieldsets offer a simple way
+>> of letting Ikiwiki know what kind of postprocessing should be offered for
+>> that particular field.
+
+> So, somehow, we have to know the meaning of a field before we can use it properly, which kind of goes against the idea of having something generic.
+
+>> We could have a default field type (text, for example), and a way to set a
+>> different field type (which is what my fieldset proposal was about).
+
+> --[[KathrynAndersen]]
+