Re: Publishing a new draft (HTML5+RDFa)

On Jul 30, 2009, at 3:49 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:

> In at least two cases (declaring what Google, Yahoo!, CC and others  
> are doing with RDFa as non-conforming, and declaring what JAWS and  
> other tools support with the summary attribute as obsolete) I see  
> areas where I believe that intelligent people can reasonably disagree.

The second part of that sentence is not an accurate reflection of what  
the spec says. It says that *using* the summary attribute is obsolete,  
and incurs a mandatory validator warning, but there's nothing obsolete  
about implementing it, as JAWS does.

Here's an interesting side note: HTML5 actually has a hook for open- 
ended extension by other specs. <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#semantics-0 
 > "Authors must not use elements, attributes, and attribute values  
that are not permitted by this specification or *other applicable  
specifications*." [emphasis mine]

While less formal than the XHTML Modularization mechanism, it seems to  
allow a specification external to HTML5 could define RDFa additions  
without also having to copy the full text of HTML5. Validators could  
then choose to support profiles that do or don't support RDFa, based  
on market demand. I think a draft that just defined the RDFa additions  
would engender less potential controversy than a full alternative  
draft of all of HTML5.

Regards,
Maciej