Re: 'HTML 5' and some poem markup?

> On 10/5/07, Dr. Olaf Hoffmann <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de> wrote:
> > What I missed so many years in (X)HTML is
> > some useful markup for poems.
>
> Do I understand you correctly that you want to include markup for a
> specific domain (poetry) in HTML5?
>


Me and many other would like to markup poems as others
want to offer audio or video (see new elements like audio
and video) or some want to offer dynamic generated 
raster image (see new element canvas). Well, audio, 
video and the dynamic creation of raster images is not
much related to a text markup language (audio and video
is already available in SMIL or in the SVGT1.2 RC), but
poems are certainly text, therefore more related to
HTML.


> XHTML2 provides an extension mechanism through RDFa. RDFa will let you
> add semantic meaning (and parsing by others) to your specific domain.

Well, even in XHTML2 there are not much semantic elements useful
for poems, maybe the l element for lines. 


> In fact you could semantically express poems of specific forms this
> way and create interesting possibilities for people who want to
> extract the poetry for e.g. resarch reasons.
>
> A markup language should probably include as little as possible from
> specific domains and focus on the general things instead. 

Well following this idea, HTML5 should reduce everything to 
the essentials like the div element. 
Many authors are starting to do this anyway,
they are tired looking for sufficient elements not existing in HTML ;o)
Why to introduce something like audio, video, embed, canvas,
section, header, footer, article etc? This is markup with some
more ore less semantic meaning. If HTML 5 is intended to
be unspecific they should be removed again. Should be enough
to have div, object (or embed), style and a for most authors.

> Domain 
> specifics should be handled via an extension mechanism that allows for
> unambiguous interpretation of the expressed information.

If it is available as HTML elements, ordinary authors may use it.
There is some chance. As more barrier are added, the possiblity
will increase that more authors only use div elements and CSS.
They do not really NEED all the other elements to style their
'content' - but for a minority of authors it is of some use to
have more than one element in use ;o)

Received on Friday, 5 October 2007 15:49:46 UTC