Merging Custom Elements into HTML 5.3

Dear all,

as we approach the HTML 5.2 CR and after consulting with the editor, we 
are looking for WG guidance on what to do with Custom Elements.

Our approach thus far has been to maintain it as a separate 
specification [1]. That has proven difficult to maintain, and it is 
largely a set of "monkey-patches" to HTML (and a few to DOM), pointing 
to various places throughout the specification where changes should be 
made to take account of custom elements.

The chairs' proposal is to merge custom elements into the core HTML 
spec, beginning with HTML 5.3. As always Candidate Recommendations will 
be limited to features that we expect to show have interoperable 
implementation, with any doubt meaning a feature will be labeled at-risk 
and may be held off for a later version.

This proposal has the short-term disadvantage that anyone trying to 
implement custom elements on top of an existing system, especially a 
browser or similar user agent, will have to look through the entire 
specification change history to be sure they have noted all the things 
they need to implement. We hope to mitigate this problem by continuing 
to publish changelogs that provide an effective quick guide to the 
things that have changed.

In balancing the "priority of constituencies", merging custom elements 
into the HTML spec has the benefit that anyone reading the specification 
will learn about custom elements at the same time, rather than having to 
read two specifications in parallel. We would like to further modularise 
the HTML spec, but custom elements does not seem like a good candidate 
to continue as a stand-alone module.

Merging the specifications also has the medium-term benefit of 
simplifying maintenance - while the discussion and resolution of issues 
continues, that aspect has been falling steadily behind.

We have raised issue 955 [2] on HTML, and would appreciate comments 
there, although you may also choose to reply to this thread.

For the chairs…

[1] https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/

[2] https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/955

Received on Friday, 23 June 2017 19:03:09 UTC