Re: Use cases

Note: This posting has a lot of fact questions: all of them are meant
straight, not ironically.

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis scripsit:

> 2. The implementors involved produce the software employed by most
> end-users and targeted by most web authors.

This point, if actually provable, is convincing to me.

> 1. The ability for W3C to expand the text/html vocabulary in the future.
> The processing model for unknown elements allows for this already.

Does it provide for void elements in future?

> 2. The ability for third parties to experiment with expanding
> the text/html vocabulary, with a view to future standardization.
> Vendor-specific attributes allow for this already.

What is a vendor?  Is it an author of client software?  And if so,
are those the only people other than W3C who are allowed to engage in
this experimentation?

Also, which are the vendor-specific attributes?  How do vendors avoid
stepping on one another in their use of these attributes?

> Selectively HTMLizing external vocabularies is arguably a better
> option than importing them entire, as it produces a language with less
> duplication and inconsistency.

Arguably not, too.  It means that there are two different dialects of the
vocabulary, native and HTMLized, which require duplication of facilities
in order to produce and process either.

> IIRC the main reason militating against this in the case of SVG and
> MathML was the desire to be interoperable with lots of existing tools.
> This may not always apply.

The longer you wait to incorporate a successful vocabulary, the more
likely it will apply, too.

> Anyways, assuming any parsing rules we concoct are compatible with
> the existing web corpus (this is a big if),

This is the part I don't understand.  If there is a specified HTML parse
for every possible sequence of characters, then how is it possible to
make *any* extension without breaking backward compatibility?  Other
vocabularies allow extension by only permitting certain sequences of
characters, and specifying that others are either undefined or erroneous.

> I don't understand the apparent interest of gobbledygook producers in
> the HTML validity badge.

I don't either: what is the actual point of making documents valid HTML?

> I prefer a third way: people developing features in a gradually widening
> sandbox in a process of ongoing refinement in continual dialog with
> their peers until they are either dropped or standardized.

Where is this sandbox?

-- 
John Cowan  cowan@ccil.org  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Does anybody want any flotsam? / I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam? / I can getsam.
        --Ogden Nash, No Doctors Today, Thank You

Received on Monday, 3 January 2011 03:54:03 UTC