Re: ISSUE-76: Need feedback on splitting Microdata into separate specification

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 6:22 PM, Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk> wrote:
> Why is it not conceivably reusable outside of HTML?

Well, okay, let me back down a bit on that.  It's conceivably reusable
outside of HTML, yes.  But no more or less than, say, <video>.  It's
plausible that other specifications would want to include videos.  For
instance, SVG currently allows embedding bitmap images, and it might
make sense for it to allow embedding videos too.  The same goes for
many other parts of HTML, even <img>.

But we shouldn't split up the specification because some other spec
might theoretically want to use some part of it separately.  That will
lead to splitting up the spec into a huge number of pieces, probably
at the wrong places.  It will also waste effort in the cases where no
other spec actually ends up using part of it separately.  XHTML 1.1
and CSS 3 both tried a modular design, and as far as I know, few to
none of their modules are actually used by other specs independent of
the others.  If authors of non-HTML specs actually *ask* for something
to be split to a separate modular spec so they can reference it,
that's when we should split something to a separate spec for the sake
of modularity.

Received on Monday, 7 December 2009 17:27:24 UTC