Re: HTML as application manifest format

>> JSON is the way the web does key/value transmission.

Fwiw, as we start to employ Custom Elements broadly, this separation
between JSON and HTML starts to become troublesome.

The knee-jerk implementation for many problems is "acquire this JSON, now
translate into HTML". When we morph those into just "acquire HTML" then the
whole JSON stage just becomes a millstone.

This can be a fraught topic, but I wanted to just toss that in there. =P

Scott


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Dimitri Glazkov <dglazkov@chromium.org>
> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 6:17 AM, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com> wrote:
> >> Hi Kornel,
> >> Although I have complete empathy about your criticisms regarding JSON,
> it is actually quite fit for this purpose. Using HTML in the way you
> describe is kinda problematic, in that it could include scripts and other
> resources: basically, one would need to build a DOM to parse out the
> information - and even if scripts where not run, or resources loaded, one
> would still then need to make a special HTML just for this purpose (which
> would confuse people, as if you use HTML you expect to be able to have
> access to features of the platform). We are going to need a custom
> processor for the JSON format, but at least parsing is already done for us
> (as it was with XML, though sadly it seems that devs prefer JSON).
> >
> > FWIW, I tend to think that Kornel is hitting on something here.
> > Whether we want it or not, HTML is the Web's serialization format.
> > It's the one that helps us understand where hyperlinks are and how
> > resources are interconnected. Having a manifest in that format sounds
> > like a Good Thing.
>
> HTML is the Web's serialization format *for HTML, and other text-like
> things*.  As Kornel's example shows, HTML is *not* well suited to
> holding key/value pairs or the like; you have to hack them in via ugly
> <meta> values, and you don't get any of the benefit of the rest of
> HTML, because <meta>/<link> *is all you're doing*.
>
> This is quite different from Templates, because those are actually
> leveraging HTML, and so using HTML as the delivery format as well just
> reduces impedance mismatch.  I don't think that applies here.  JSON is
> the way the web does key/value transmission.
>
> ~TJ
>
>