Re: Perception of HTML5 (was Re: Formal definition of HTML5)

On Apr 17, 2007, at 4:56 AM, Henrik Dvergsdal wrote:

>
>
> On 17. apr. 2007, at 11.30, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> working directly with the community of web developers, taking  
>> feedback into account, iterating continuously over many years  
>> improving the document as time passes.
>
>> We will be fixing errors in our specs for years if not decades to  
>> come
>
>> I prefer English prose over the other techniques because in my  
>> experience
>> it leads to better implementations
>
>> Stability is a myth in the development of specifications as  
>> complicated as
>> HTML
>
> OK. Let me take a step back and try to make sense of all this.
>
> To me HTML5 is now starting to look less like a spec/standard in  
> the usual sense and more like a continuously evolving guide to  
> building browsers, conformance checkers and web pages.
>
> To me, it looks like HTML5 as proposed will not define a formal  
> language in the traditional sense.

I don't know what you mean by formal in this case. If you are  
assuming that a language has to define its grammar in a special  
symbolic syntax rather than English to be well-defined, then I think  
you are just wrong. Also, the spec changing for some time in response  
to implementation feedback is neither unusual nor a bad thing for a  
web standard.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:49:09 UTC