Role attribute values

Greetings, I have been reading the XHTML Vocabulary namespace [1] document 
and have a few comments. I have not completed the review since it would 
result in a lot of comments that follow a particular pattern. Rather than 
waste your time, and mine, detailing every comment when you may not accept 
the premise underlying most of them, I have included the following for 
your consideration:

Consistent terminology:

  uses both "document" and "page", pick one, 
  I suggest "Web Page" as defined by 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-di-gloss-20030825/#def-web-page

Consistent use of RDFa:

  two different examples, "search" and "alert", why are they different?
 
  <div id="search" about="#search" typeof="rdf:Property">
    <h2>search</h2>
    <p property="rdfs:comment" datatype="xsd:string"><span 
property="rdfs:label">search</span> indicates that the section provides a 
search facility.</p>
  </div>

  <div id="alert" about="#alert" datatype="xsd:string" 
typeof="rdf:Property">
    <h2>alert</h2>
    <p property="rdfs:comment" datatype="xsd:string">A message with an 
alert or error information.</p>
  </div>
 
  I do not know if there is any significant difference between the two 
examples, I do know that they show up differently in Operator.


http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#complementary
complementary

secondary indicates that the section supports but is separable from the 
main content of resource.

change "secondary" to "complementary"


http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#alert
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#alertdialog
Two comments. 
  1) please define "alert". "My interpretation" is that this results in a 
some "modal" display that prevents the user from continuing until that 
have responded to the "alert". But this may not be what is intended, how 
would I know what is intended?
  2) I agree with a comment made by Mark Birbeck [2], I think it would be 
better to remove "alertdialog" and use the "dialog" and "alert" terms and 
specify role="alert dialog". Is some distinction between 
role="alertdialog" and role="alert dialog"? If so it is not described. 
 
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#application
A broad term, it is not clear to me from the description when I should use 
it.

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#button
This is the only term that caters for an affordance that enables 
user-triggered actions. "button" carries a certain amount of baggage in 
terms of preconceptions. There are many ways of enabling user action 
without the use of a "button" uless your definition is such that it covers 
all activation mechanisms. Since I am unsure as to your intent it is hard 
to suggest an alternative but perhaps "activator" might be close.

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#checkbox
Baggage again here, if this intended to refer to the common UI widget then 
I would have expected only two possible states, i.e. a boolean. Whether 
the states represent true|false, on|off, 0|1, dead|alive is determined by 
the "Web Page"|"Application" creator. Once again, I think it would be more 
appropriate to name this property "boolean" or 2wayChoice.
 
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#combobox
Baggage again here. What is the important essence? The user is offered the 
opportunity to choose one item from a set of alternatives. You also 
suggest "where users can type to locate a selected item". A "combobox" is 
not the only widget that offers these capabilities, especially in the RIA 
world.


[1] http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/
[2] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2008AprJun/0005.html 
 

Regards, Roland
FBCS, CITP
IBM Software Group, Strategy, Software Standards





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