Re: Use cases

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Edward O'Connor <hober0@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Here's another use case, which I think is important.
> >
> > An organization is using HTML5 as part of a sophisticated document
> > production workflow.  The final stage is to serve HTML documents over the
> > web to consumers. At this final stage, the documents are valid HTML5
> (with
> > no extensions).  However, at earlier stages in the workflow the
> organization
> > wishes to add extensions to HTML5 in order to guide subsequent stages.
>
> This use case sounds like Use Case 6 in my ISSUE-41 Change Proposal:
>
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/User:Eoconnor/ISSUE-41#Use_Case_6
>
> As documented there, several existing HTML extension points already
> address this use case.
>
> > In other words, the organization wants to invent its own tags
> > for internal use so that it can represent information in as
> straightforward
> > and direct a way as possible.
>
> Ahh. I don't assume that such workflow extensions require novel
> *elements* (which is assuming a solution to the use case).
>
>
I'm not just thinking about metadata.  I'm also thinking about data that I
want to express in a high-level semantic way (and for which there is no
appropriate HTML element); this high-level semantic representation would be
transformed by later stages of the workflow into vanilla HTML. For example,
a BNF grammar, an organization chart or something like Word's SmartArt.

There are mechanisms in HTML5 which could be used here: <script> with a
custom media-type, or class attributes, but I think they are unnecessarily
clumsy and author-hostile for this situation, compared to just using a new
tag (which I accept is not appropriate in unconstrained situations).

James