Re: ISSUE-73 (Overlap of "predefined vocabularies" with other specifications), was: Concerns about new section "predefined vocabularies"

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009, James Graham wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Jun 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
> > > > > Spec Size - the spec already is big, and there is no evidence that
> > > > > this needs to be specified *inside* the HTML5 spec.
> > > > Whether it is specified within the same document or in a separate
> > > > document to which HTML5 normatively refers doesn't seem to make any
> > > > difference to the complexity of the platform. I don't understand the
> > > > desire to exchange fewer larger documents for more smaller documents.
> > > Indeed. However I didn't suggest that HTML5 should refer to it at all.
> > > Problem gone.
> > 
> > We can't remove the referene to the predefined vocabularies, since 
> > they're a core part of the drag-and-drop model. That is in fact a key 
> > part to solving a number of the use cases.
> 
> Since generic microdata is already exposed to the drag and drop model it 
> seems that we could remove the predefined vocabularies by dropping 
> special drag and drop magic for these types and leaving it up to script 
> authors to convert from the generic microdata form to the canonical 
> format. Since script libraries tend to have short release cycles 
> compared to browsers, it seems like the approach of getting browser 
> vendors to write the essential platform-level building blocks and script 
> authors to do the higher level data transformations could lead to a 
> better end result than trying to do too much at the platform level.

The main feature this would lose is drag and drop of vCard and vEvent 
metadata from (unscripted, static) HTML pages to non-Web applications like 
Address Book.app or native calendar applications that support iCalendar 
drag-and-drop.

Do we want to drop support for dragging contact information from the Web 
to native apps just so that we can change which spec holds what? That 
seems weird. (We could split the sections out and have bidirectional 
normative references instead, but that seems to defeat the point of 
extracting the sections.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 16 July 2009 07:16:38 UTC