Re: Presentational markup

On 03/25/2010 06:18 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:21:50 +0100, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
> wrote:
>> On 03/24/2010 06:49 PM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>> On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:32:08 +0100, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> One of the things that attracted me to HTML5 was that it purported to
>>>> document the web as it exists as opposed to other efforts at the W3C
>>>> which intended to change the web to their vision as to how it should
>>>> be.
>>>
>>> Can't we have a mix of pragmatism and idealism?
>>
>> Could we? Yes. But my observation is that what we tend to have here is
>> a situation of what I call "conjugating adjectives". You know how in
>> English one says "I am", "you are", "he is", ...? What I observe is
>> people who have a tendency to take this a step further and go "I am
>> idealistic", "You are dogmatic", "they are orthodox".
>
> What I meant is that HTML5 is not completely about the Web as it exists.
> It still sets goals. Instead of describing the various ways in which
> implementations are different from each other, it sets a path for how
> they can converge over time, adjusted along the way as appropriate. I
> think this is important in order to make progress.
>
> Likewise setting goals for content authors make sense to me. Of course
> we need to evaluate over time whether they can be met, but HTML5 just
> started to get some traction. Transitional has been the line of
> designer/developer advocacy for over a decade; I do not think we should
> be surprised there is plenty of it on the Web. HTML5 offers a break from
> this and given the reactions of designers/developers so far, it seems to
> be positively received. I've yet to see blog posts asking for the return
> of the <font> element or cellspacing="" on <table>.

Cool!  Let's get rid of acronym and font.  While we are at it, lets get 
rid of b, i, small, big and tt.  Let's require quotes around attributes, 
and every tag to be explicitly closed.  Lets replace den and ins with an 
edit attribute.  Oh, and lets completely redo how forms are done.

I don't think we want blog posts to be the criteria.  There have been 
blog posts and even entire books being written and used as a part of 
curriculum which require quotes around attributes.  And, as alluded to 
above, entire working groups formed around such notions.

We need to be inclusive and consistent.  Either we seek to accept 
everyone's dogma or we put our own dogmas on par with the dogma of others.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Thursday, 25 March 2010 12:56:00 UTC