Re: ISSUE-41/ACTION-97 decentralized-extensibility

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Tony Ross wrote:
>> Given some of the comments in this thread, I'd like to step back and try 
>> to get consensus on the core problem. Specifically I want to know 
>> whether or not the group feels providing some sort of a solution for 
>> decentralized extensibility, in particular decentralized extensibility 
>> of markup, is important.
>>
>> In short, should HTML 5 provide an explicit means for others to define 
>> custom elements and attributes within HTML markup?
> 
> This is putting the cart before the horse. Before deciding whether we want 
> a solution, we need to establish whether we have a problem.
> 
> We shouldn't be discussing whether or not people should be able to create 
> proprietary (but validating) HTML elements until we have a problem for 
> which that is a reasonable solution.

Is <datagrid> proprietary?

>> If we cannot agree on the problem, then debating the technical details 
>> of a potential solution is pointless.
> 
> Exactly. But decentralized extensibility is not a problem. It's a class of 
> solutions. Is there a problem?

HTMLn, for any value of 'n', is by necessity a snapshot.  No matter when 
the snapshot is taken, there will always be elements which are not /yet/ 
ready to be standardized.  Prematurely identifying any such element as 
proprietary simply poisons the discussion.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Thursday, 22 October 2009 22:19:24 UTC