Re: Publication of specifications as HTML5

On Aug 22, 2011, at 05:15 , Liam R E Quin wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-19 at 09:21 -0400, Karl Dubost wrote:
>> What I have not seen on the discussion thread yet (and that I would like to see) is 
>> What are the current *tools* requirements for processing/hosting a document on W3C space?
>> With these requirements, *we* (the community altogether) can decide what is usable or not. 
> 
> Seems to me a requirement should be that the format issuitable for
> archiving.

I strongly agree. I also happen to think that this constitutes a strong endorsement in favour of using HTML5 rather than previous versions. Even without being a REC, HTML5 has a far better definition of core parts of HTML processing (e.g. how to build a DOM) than any previous stable version.

>  This means that the document indicates to exactly which
> version of which specification(s) it conforms, and actually does
> conform.

Assuming an absolute worst-case scenario in which a small group of developers locked away in an underground dollhouse to hide from the zombie apocalypse try to rebuild civilisation given little more than Perl and access to /TR/ I really don't think that they'll need a version indicator. If it so happens that <footer> is removed before REC and reintroduced post-apocalyptically to describe zombies on foot (as opposed to <crawler>), then presumably our small gang could cross-reference the specification they're trying to parse with the snapshot of HTML5 that was in use at the time. It could even be automated.

I for one would certainly welcome using HTML5 for /TR/. FWIW, declaration aside, when a ReSpec document is serialised for use as a pubrules compliant document the only change that is operated is http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/respec2/file/8157abfc9ada/js/w3c/unhtml5.js.

Oh, and while we're on consensual topics, it would be nice to be able to use RDFa/microdata/whatever too :)

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:08:28 UTC