- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:14:32 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer <sebastian@dreamlab.net>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer wrote: > > The way I see it is that what happened here at W3C recently is like a > merger between two competing companies with two competing products. > While both companies tried to define themselves as being "anti" the > other, shortly after the merger this mindset still exists, but slowly > fades aways in favour of a synergy strategy enabling a better product > for the customer. For the record, the WHAT working group is not against XHTML2 or XForms. Indeed, many great ideas are in those technologies, and many have been incorporated into the WHATWG specs. If you (Sebastian) look at the acknowledgements of the Web Forms 2.0, you will see your name there. However, backwards compatibility is a core principle to the WHATWG work, which is why instead of just using the XForms and XHTML2 technologies, we developed extensions to the existing language and APIs to address similar needs. Doing this work in the W3C doesn't change this at all; backwards compatibility and interoperability in the face of non-conforming content are still core principles that the WHATWG and its contributors think are critical to any Web technology's development. I'm a little concerned, however, that you would describe your own working groups as having defined themselves as being "anti" the WHATWG. Is this really true? If so, I hope you are right that that mindset will fade. > I would like to kick start discussion on whether or not it is beneficial > to think in terms of Best of all Worlds, including HTML5, Web Forms 2.0, > XHTML 1.0, Modularization of XHTML, XHTML 2 and XForms. I absolutely agree that it is beneficial to consider all technologies and proposals. The WHATWG has been doing this since its inception. Web Forms 2.0 and Web Apps 1.0 ("HTML5") both already incorporate features from XHTML 1.0, Modularization of XHTML, XHTML 2 and XForms, where those features are suitable for today's Web, solve clear user or author needs, and can be made backwards compatible with good graceful fallback. In fact, I'm not sure of any further features from those drafts that could be added without problems (yes, yes, Anne, maybe <di> could). Some people have suggested some features, like declarative calculations, but it isn't clear how those features would work (the XForms Transitional draft, as previously discussed, doesn't actually define how they would work for all cases -- according to the current definition, in fact, one would have to solve the halting problem to implement the spec). In the case of declarative calculations it is also not clear how the feature could be made to degrade gracefully without breaking full implementations. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 22 March 2007 18:14:38 UTC