Re: "HTML: The Markup Language" (draft attempt an "HTML producers" spec)

Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>, 2008-11-13 12:25 -0500:

> Nice work, Michael.
> 
> 2008/11/13 Michael(tm) Smith <mike@w3.org>:
> >
> > During our face-to-face joint meeting with the W3C TAG in
> > Mandelieu, a large part of our discussion with the TAG[1]
> > concerned the idea of producing a separate normative spec for
> > HTML5 that defined just the syntax, structure, and semantics of
> > the language for "producers" of HTML content (people/authors and
> > applications, such as editors and content management systems, that
> > produce HTML content)
> 
> That's certainly an important scenario, but IMO it's not the only one
> that a language specification should accommodate.  IMO, it should also
> prescribe how a consumer can reconstruct the meaning of the document
> given the bag-o-bits (and a media type).

It's intentional that the current draft does not attempt to do
that. It is in part an attempts to keep the scope as tightly
constrained as possible by not dealing at all with how to consume
HTML content.

> For that to happen, the HTML 5 parser specification would need
> to be included.

If the HTML5 parser specification to be included here it would
end up being a different spec. For one, it would require also
bringing in or normatively referencing other parts of the HTML5
draft that the parser specification depends on. As it is currently
scoped, this "producers" spec does not have those
dependencies / need for normative references.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Thursday, 13 November 2008 19:46:04 UTC