- From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
- Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:04:55 +0200
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- CC: "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On 08.04.2010 20:12, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > > On Apr 8, 2010, at 5:09 AM, Julian Reschke wrote: > >> Also, it's not clear *at all* whether this is a feature that people >> really want, and if they do, whether it needs to be part of HTML5. >> Given the fact that it's non-trivial to generate a valid Atom feed >> from HTML, but the reverse *is* trivial, we should also consider >> removing this feature altogether (I'd be happy to write a 2nd change >> proposal if people want to see that as well). (See [2]) > > Since a number of people have expressed interest, I think it would be > helpful to provide a second proposal along these lines. Sure. Here it is: SUMMARY The HTML5 spec contains an algorithm for producing an Atom (RFC4287) feed document from an HTML page. There are many problems with this, summarized under RATIONALE. This Change Proposal removes the complete section defining this algorithm. RATIONALE The are multiple problems with the algorithm for Atom generation: 1) It's not clear that a sufficient amount of people is interested in this. HTML pages that would be candidates for this usually are generated from a different source, like an article database, or even a feed document. Therefore, providing both simply is not a problem for the author. Defining a feature that is of little use increases the spec size (more to review) and the risk of getting things wrong because of poor review (see below). 2) Defining a mapping between both formats *is* interesting. Other parties have done it before. This is even mentioned in HTML5. There's no reason why another variant of this needs to be in HTML5. 3) The mapping as currently specified contradicts the Atom specification (RFC 4287) in several aspects. If this Change Proposal does not get applied, the individual problems with the mapping still will need to be fixed. There's a separate Change Proposal ([1]) which is focused on fixing some of these issues. DETAILS Remove all of 4.15.1 ("Atom"). Also remove 4.15 ("Converting HTML to other formats"), which otherwise would be empty. Note: the removal of this part should be applied to all variants of the spec, be it in W3C space or not. Otherwise, the algorithm will need proper review, and I'd recommend to encourage the members of the atom-syntax mailing list to do that. IMPACT 1. Positive Effects Removal of spec text which is believed to be non-essential, controversial, in contradiction with other applicable specs, and potentially buggy. 2. Negative Effects None. 3. Conformance Classes Changes None (there was non requirement to implement this anyway). 4. Risks None. REFERENCES [1] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/0291.html>
Received on Friday, 9 April 2010 14:05:36 UTC