Is HTML5 Too Big?

One question that has come up on this list is whether the HTML5 spec  
is too big (perhaps due to including UA conformance requirements and  
error handling, or due to excessive new features). I made some  
mention of this in previous emails, but it's been pointed out that I  
didn't include all the right documents. I counted pages by  
downloading the PDF version when available, or printing to PDF from  
my browser (Safari) when not.

WHATWG HTML5 proposal specs:

Web Apps 1.0 - 260 pages
Web Forms 2.0 - 55 pages
Total - 315 pages

This will actually replace several specs, not just HTML 4.01, since  
it includes the HTML DOM and an XML serialization in addition to  
defining the markup:

HTML 4.01 related specs

HTML 4.01 - 375 pages
DOM Level 2 HTML - 131 pages
XHTML 1.0 - 51 pages
XHTML 1.0 DTDs and entity definitions (not included in the all-in-one  
PDF) - 71 pages
Total - 628

Some suggested that the HTML 4.01 total should also include the size  
of the SGML spec, since for HTML5 purposes that is replaced by the  
new parsing section. But this seems a little excessive to me. It  
makes more sense to treat it as an external reference to an  
underlying format, like XML or Unicode. I'm told it is around 500  
additional pages though.

Further disclaimers: HTML5 isn't done yet and may well add  
significant new sections. HTML5 is also written in a denser style,  
with markup attributes and DOM attributes and methods described  
solely in prose, rather than using a list.

Event considering these factors, I think this is strong counter- 
evidence to arguments that HTML5 is too big.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 03:43:30 UTC