[whatwg] Clarify how to indicate document hierarchy

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis at googlemail.com> wrote:

>Of course, just because the HTML4 spec goes in for this stuff doesn't
>itself mean it's a good idea.

What I'd hate to see happen is that we'd end up with best authoring
guidelines incorporated into the HTML 5 spec were those guidelines end
up being as contentious as for example the WAI 2.0 guidelines turned out
to be. And IMO the potential for such contention is significant. 

Incorporating verbose guidelines into the spec itself would increase the
exposure, but at the expense of:

* Having to compromise the spec's structure to accommodate different
goals
* Significantly increasing the amount of work for Ian
* The aforementioned risk of contention which might cause some people to
resent HTML 5

I'd much rather see different authors writing their own best authoring
guidelines using their own argumentation and have these compete for
adoption amongst peers. IMO some of the benefits of this are:

* More dynamic and creative usage of the language
* No constraints on discussing the full arsenal of techniques (for
example CSS) needed to achieve the required goal

My preference would be to have a page on the WhatWG site that links to
such authoring guidelines accompanied with a warning that they are not
necessarily endorsed by the group. The spec itself could then refer
people looking for more verbose usage guidelines to that page.

-- 
Spartanicus

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Received on Monday, 12 February 2007 15:01:35 UTC