RE: Write-up about semantics in HTML5 from A List Apart

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Julian Reschke
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:17 AM
> To: Ian Hickson
> Cc: John Allsopp; public-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Write-up about semantics in HTML5 from A List Apart
> 
> > future maintainers of HTML can later extend the language to fix their
> > problems. This is just how HTML4 was done; it's how CSS was done;
> it's how
> > XML was done (you can't invent new XML syntax, for instance, that
> would
> > require a new version of XML).
> > ...
> 
> That is misleading. The important difference in XML is that the syntax
> is frozen (-> no new parser required, at least in theory (*)), but
> XML-based languages are extensible nevertheless (on the vocabulary
> level, not the syntax level).

I really don't think that the complaint is about not being able to extend
the syntax of HTML, though... it's about being able to extend the
vocabulary. I really think that what these folks really need, is for
browsers to start working well with XML, not for HTML to change the way it
works. To be honest, I am an idiot when it comes to XHTML; maybe they just
need better browser support for that, and then they'll still get the CSS and
DOM support from HTML, with XML's vocabulary extension mechanisms. They
should also be pushing for ARIA and/or RDFa directly in HTML, to give their
new vocabulary semantic meaning.

J.Ja

Received on Wednesday, 7 January 2009 15:01:07 UTC