Re: Publishing a new draft (HTML5+RDFa)

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> On Jul 30, 2009, at 3:49 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
> 
>> In at least two cases (declaring what Google, Yahoo!, CC and others 
>> are doing with RDFa as non-conforming, and declaring what JAWS and 
>> other tools support with the summary attribute as obsolete) I see 
>> areas where I believe that intelligent people can reasonably disagree. 
> 
> The second part of that sentence is not an accurate reflection of what 
> the spec says. It says that *using* the summary attribute is obsolete, 
> and incurs a mandatory validator warning, but there's nothing obsolete 
> about implementing it, as JAWS does.

I still believe that this is an area where intelligent people can 
reasonably disagree.

It is theoretically possible to get all of the major browser vendors in 
a room and get them to agree, and where the spec has documented such 
agreement it is rock solid (yes, even in areas where it disagrees with 
other specs).

It is not possible to do the same exercise with authors, and where the 
spec attempts to influence behavior through mandatory warnings, 
particularly when those warnings disagree with the the recommendations 
of others and cases where the behavior produces observable behavior in 
tools like popular tools like JAWS (and, I learned today that this 
attribute is specifically exposed through Windows APIs to yet other 
tools)... lets just say that I fully understand that this is an area 
where intelligent people can disagree.

> Here's an interesting side note: HTML5 actually has a hook for 
> open-ended extension by other 
> specs. <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#semantics-0> "Authors 
> must not use elements, attributes, and attribute values that are not 
> permitted by this specification or *other applicable specifications*." 
> [emphasis mine]
> 
> While less formal than the XHTML Modularization mechanism, it seems to 
> allow a specification external to HTML5 could define RDFa additions 
> without also having to copy the full text of HTML5. Validators could 
> then choose to support profiles that do or don't support RDFa, based on 
> market demand. I think a draft that just defined the RDFa additions 
> would engender less potential controversy than a full alternative draft 
> of all of HTML5.

I understand and agree with your overall point.

I question why this is suggested for RDFa but not for micro-data.

> Regards,
> Maciej

- Sam Ruby

Received on Friday, 31 July 2009 01:24:11 UTC