[Bug 18669] Switch from is= to <tag if a decision has been reached among implementers

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=18669

--- Comment #47 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> ---
(In reply to comment #44)
> 1) The "liberal" camp, whose dwellers see custom tags as HTML’s salvation.
> They cite top sites and their wholly imperative architecture as the evidence
> of “the battle of HTML” already have been lost and the need for
> flexibility/carrot to entice the authors back to declarative land. The
> emerged, reborn markup will not be “HTML as we know it”, but it will be
> closer to HTML than imperative code.

If the goal is to have declarative code but to give up on the HTML semantics,
then we should do that, we shouldn't try to cling to vestiges of HTML (e.g.
making it possible to extend <ul>, using the HTML parser, etc).


> For conservatives, the worst-case scenario includes a whole new breed of
> markup where documents no longer contain any recognizable HTML semantics,
> and as such does not seem much better than the imperative approach that top
> sites use now. 

I think the worst-case scenario is to have documents no longer contain any
recognizable HTML semantics while still having all the problems with HTML today
— being forced to work around the HTML vocabulary, having the HTML parser's
wacky quirks always fighting with us, etc. Making entirely new vocabularies,
maybe even new syntaxes, isn't out of the question IMHO.


I don't have a problem with us attempting to create a new mechanism by which
you can create widget libraries, using the DOM, CSS, JS, SVG as a framework on
which to hang in, possibly with a new syntax that's actually nice for designing
UIs (rather than the SGML-derived mess we have now). I don't have a problem
with us making a system that leverages HTML's strength as a semantic
vocabulary, giving a way to extend the platform while building on top of what
it is already.

What I object to is designing something that essentially gives lip service to
the latter while really trying to do the former. That's the worst of both
worlds; people will make their own vocabularies, but will be constrained by
HTML's quirks and warts.

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Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2013 23:24:09 UTC