HTML/XML Task Force Minutes 18 January 2011

See http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes

[1]W3C

                                   - DRAFT -

                              HTML/XML Task Force

Meeting 4, 18 Jan 2011

   [2]Agenda

   See also: [3]IRC log

Attendees

   Present
           Noah, Robin, Henri, Yves, Norm, Michael Champion, Anne, Michael
           Kay, John

   Regrets

   Chair
           Norm

   Scribe
           Norm

Contents

     * [4]Topics

         1. [5]Accept this agenda?
         2. [6]Accept minutes from the previous meeting?
         3. [7]Next meeting: 25 Jan 2011
         4. [8]Use cases/goals
         5. [9]Any other business?

     * [10]Summary of Action Items

   --------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Accept this agenda?

   [11]http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-agenda

   Accepted.

  Accept minutes from the previous meeting?

   -> [12]http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/11-minutes

   Accepted.

  Next meeting: 25 Jan 2011

   Noah is at risk for 25 Jan.

  Use cases/goals

   Norm: The only new use case I saw in the last week was XForms, which
   seemed controversial.

   MikeK: I think there needs to be a story as there are a community of
   people that want to use it with HTML

   MikeC: Is it a separate use case because there are mixed names, or is it
   just another XML vocabulary?

   MikeK: It's a use case in the sense that doing it mixes HTML and XML. It
   has particular problems, which is why we consider more than one.

   Henri: I have a bit of a problem with calling using XForms a use case; as
   opposed to creating an interface to allow users to submit values to a
   server.
   ... I think XForms presupposes a solution to the problem. It's a use case
   in terms of vocabulary mixing.
   ... But I refer back to my email; there was a task for explicitly for
   XForms+HTML and it petered out. I think that's evidence that there isn't
   as much interest here as it might seem. They've missed their opportunity
   to have it discussed.

   <Zakim> noah, you wanted to answer Norm on is it a use case (after Henri)

   Noah: I guess my feeling is a bit in the middle. With respect, I think
   Henri goes a little further than I would with taking this off the table. I
   think the TF was about putting XForms in HTML.
   ... Here, were talking about the broader issue of low hanging fruit or
   high benefit to cost ratio wrt lining up HTML and XML.
   ... The use case might be interactive form input. That's like saying to
   someone who asks for a C language interface, "you don't want a C language
   interface..."
   ... Just saying XForms is listing a technology. I think we could say that
   one or more communities have vocabularies that be mixed.
   ... I also think it's in the nature of what we're doing that we want to
   describe general facilities. They might not be fully justified by any
   particular use case.
   ... Some of the email suggested an ambiguity in defining the use case; I
   think we should resolve that.
   ... Some folks refer to XForms as an XML island; others seem to be
   thinking of HTML in an XForms kind of template.

   John: What's a use case and what's a solution depends on the level we
   take. In one sense HTML isn't a use case, it's a particular solution to
   the problem of dispaying information on the web.
   ... At our level, I think it's ok to describe technologies as a use case.
   We want to consider the question of how I can use technology X.
   ... At some level, the question is how do we keep the machines turning and
   ourselves employed.

   <Zakim> darobin, you wanted to it's not about XForms, it's about the
   integration problems that XForms might demonstrate

   Robin: I don't much care about XForms as a solution is a use case or not.
   The part that's interesting here is, if there are specific problems that
   XForms has integrating into HTML. Those are problems that might surface
   elsewhere.
   ... I'd like to look at the problems that come up, even if XForms as a
   solution aren't within our remit.

   Anne: The problem is that not everyone accepts that XForms is a technology
   that we need. Therefore looking at the underlying use case might be
   better.
   ... In some sense we started the WHATWG because we didn't like XForms.

   John: But some people do.

   Henri: I think Robin has a point. XForms demonstrates a different kind of
   integration. MathML and SVG are pretty much self contained islands. There
   are certain well defined exit points.
   ... XForms intermixes more with its host language. In that sense it's a
   different kind of vocabulary. The problem that I have with running too far
   in that direction is that if it happens that the vocabularies that will
   get integrated are all like MathML and SVG, then preparing for integrating
   other types may be architectural astronautics.
   ... We might be doing work for a case that we'll never actually need. It
   might be that integrating the vocabularies that intermingle more is in the
   "you don't need it" department.

   Norm: Does anyone have other use cases in mind?

   Noah: This could just be me, I'm having trouble answering that question.
   We've done a good if somewhat scattered job of a first pass. But I don't
   think I could write down a net of all this discussion.
   ... Do you have a process in mind, Norm?

   Norm: No, not really. I thought we'd get a lot more use cases and I'm not
   sure what the next steps are for just five cases.

   Henri: I'd like to propose some next steps.
   ... Writing down the list of use cases we've discussed. I think there were
   one or two that were added as we went.

   <noah> Exactly, Henri, that's what I was proposing. I think we should not
   only list the 5, but net out in a sentence or two each where they stand in
   terms of what we learned from the discussion.

   Henri: And then going through that list and maybe just copying and pasting
   the replies from the email and telcons to catalog what solutions have come
   up so far.
   ... Perhaps we can conclude that the solutions are all good enough. Or
   perhaps we'll conclude that more work is necessary.
   ... Then perhaps we can write this up in a way that will help an XML
   person learn what the known HTML solutions are for their problems.

   <Zakim> noah, you wanted to comment on weighting use cass

   Noah: I agree pretty much completely. I suggest we also think about which
   ones look really really important. We might decide that a couple are
   really important, some are less so. I'm missing that kind of weighting.
   ... Either we're going to get really lucky, finding a solution that's all
   benefit with very little cost, but much more likely we're going to look at
   choices. We're going to look at changes we can make and be able to say
   which ones are worth the trouble.

   Henri: There's also the chance that we're so lucky that nothing needs to
   be changed at all.

   Noah: Yes, that might happen to.

   <hsivonen> maybe a wiki?

   Norm: I wonder if we could break up the work.

   MikeC: I agree that it's a good idea; since I won't be there to defend
   myself, you can give me an action item to do something.
   ... Identify the use cases and divy up the work of going through the mail
   and minutes to summarize the state of it.
   ... If there's a template for it, that would be great too.

   Norm: Do we want to do it on a wiki?

   John: What about people on the mailing list?

   Anne: They can send mail and we'll copy it over, we don't have to make
   this too hard.

   Norm: Sounds like we're going to use a wiki. Any opposition?

   None heard.

   Noah: Time frame?

   Norm: I think it would be good to have it by next week, but I suppose the
   world won't end if it isn't.

   <hsivonen> I volunteer to take one

   <hsivonen> I could take "I have an XML toolchain and I want to consume
   HTML5 because I'd like to process HTML5 using XML tools."

   1. XML toolchain to consume HTML5 -- Henri

   2. HTML5 toolchain to consume XML -- MChampion

   3. Islands of HTML5 in XML -- Noah

   4. Islands of XML in HTML -- John

   5. Making XML easier -- Anne

   6. XForms - M. Kay

   <anne> (My use case was about easy of authoring of XML.)

   <anne> ease*

   Norm: I'll take the action of getting an appropriate root page on the wiki
   and sending out instructions

   John: I wanted to mention MicroLark. I have a parser and the
   implementation of the object model pretty well advanced.

   <hsivonen> Did Sam have a seventh use case or was it part of the other
   ones?

   John: I'm running through the test cases, not all of which apply.
   ... I hope to get something out in about a week.

   Henri: Sam sent email about how to generate HTML with legacy tools. So
   basically, the scenario was that the content generating tools are legacy
   but you want to generate HTML5 of newer vintage than your tools.

   John: You mean HTML tools?

   Henri: Yes.

   John: How is that relevant?

   Henri: Maybe it isn't.

   John: Maybe another use case is having XML tools that produce HTML5.

   Noah: The text/html serialization?

   <hsivonen> for the last point,
   [13]http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11755 might be of
   interest

   John: At least some of it. As long as XHTML isn't fully accepted, people
   will want to generate the text form. I think we know the shape of the
   answer, an HTML5 serializer.

   Noah: There may be other ways to skin the cat.

   Henri: With respect to XHTML, everything except some edge cases like the
   form feed character, is possible with XHTML that's possible with the
   text/html serialization.

   Noah: A commitment to such bidirectional support in the future can be
   listed as a possible solution.

   Norm: I'll write that one up.

   <hsivonen> The "Sample Apps" section at
   [14]http://about.validator.nu/htmlparser/ is relevant to what was just
   discussed.

   Norm: And after we have the wiki pages up, the community can tell us about
   the use cases we've overlooked.

  Any other business?

   <noah> I think we need to point out that this works for the subset of the
   language that, e.g. does not depend on prefix bindings from xmlns

   <noah> right?

   <noah> tnx

   Norm confirms he'll get the wiki setup.

   Adjourned.

Summary of Action Items

   [End of minutes]

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    Minutes formatted by David Booth's [15]scribe.perl version 1.135 ([16]CVS
    log)
    $Date: 2011/01/20 21:26:19 $

References

   1. http://www.w3.org/
   2. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-agenda
   3. http://www.w3.org/2011/01/18-html-xml-irc
   4. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#agenda
   5. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#item01
   6. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#item02
   7. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#item03
   8. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#item04
   9. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#item05
  10. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-minutes#ActionSummary
  11. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/18-agenda
  12. http://www.w3.org/2010/html-xml/2011/01/11-minutes
  13. http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11755
  14. http://about.validator.nu/htmlparser/
  15. http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/scribe/scribedoc.htm
  16. http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2002/scribe/

Received on Thursday, 20 January 2011 21:27:50 UTC