- From: Arjun Ray <aray@q2.net>
- Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 18:23:24 -0400 (EDT)
- To: W3C HTML <www-html@w3.org>
On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor wrote:
> > Of course, this leaves open the real issue, which is how to convey the
> > *semantic* import of a version specification. Unofrtunately, ISO8879
> > doesn't provide a way. All we know is that the doctype declaration
> > definitely does not qualify.
>
> Last year I suggested durring the ``Future of HTML'' discussions, that
> the W3C adopt an HTML Architecture. This would actually provide
> semantics for HTML in a standard way.
Not only should this have been done long ago - it *was* the way to make
"facilitate experimentation and interoperability" something more than
high-minded handwaving - but, IMHO, HTML should have been redefined as a
family of architectures. Basically, HTML grew by haphazard accretion. It
has all the design elegance and consistency of a bag of potatoes. Rather
than insist on some monolithic (meta-)DTD, modularization - e.g. Forms,
Tables, Lists, Outlines, etc. - makes much more sense.
Either way, HTML conformance should have been defined as a matter of
architectural (i.e. mappable) validity. (This allows "experimentation"
without automatically violating the currently misguided requirement of
conformance to a fixed DTD.)
> Instead the W3C has choosen to develop XHTML as an XML implementation.
XML is a new hammer. Everything else is therefore a nail.
> I actally haven't looked at the XHTML specs yet, so I don't know whether
> it resolves these issues or not.
It hasn't. There's some stuff to invoke "namespaces", but that's only the
latest bogosity in fashion.
Arjun
Received on Saturday, 2 October 1999 17:42:50 UTC