Re: [XHTML Role] SVG WG LC comments (PR#8038)

Ed,

We have embedded responses to your issues below.  Please confirm whether these
responses resolve your issues or not.

ed@opera.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The SVG WG has reviewed the XHTML Role attribute module, W3C Working Draft
> 7 April 2008, http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-role/.
>
> General comments
> ----------------
> It's nice to see an extensible solution that allows other languages to add
> additional roles using the CURIE syntax. The SVG WG looks forward to  working
> with WAI PF to define roles suitable for common types of graphics such as 
maps,
> charts, etc.
>   

The XHTML 2 Working Group has relegated most of the role definition work for the
XHTML Vocabulary Space to the WAI PF.  So yes, we encourage you to work with
them to define cohesive vocabulary items either for your own private space or in
the XHTML space, as appropriate.  In general, we encourage all groups to define
their own vocabularies.  More on this below.

> It's is a pity that no RelaxNG schema is provided. Please consider adding 
one.
>
   
We do not yet have a RelaxNG modularization methodology.  When we do, you can be
confident that each XHTML module will get such an implementation.  It is
notionally on our list as part of XHTML 2 development.

> Whereas XHTML typically has elements to markup text, the text elements in 
SVG
> provide no idea about their semantical meaning. Therefore it could be quite
> useful to have some role values for 'paragraph', 'section', etc. This is
> especially useful for the interpretation of documents, if there is no  visual
> rendering available due to the capabilities either of the user or the
> user-agent and improves accessibility of non (X)HTML markup languages. Such
> attributes might help to align prose text in SVG in a better understandable
> way in such an additional text view.
>   

We agree that there may be collections of SVG data to which people will want to
assign semantics via the role attribute.  To the extend that these are
generalized concepts, you should feel free to reply upon the default collection
of roles in the XHTML vocabulary.  Beyond that, we encourage you (and all
groups) to define your own vocabulary using the W3C's ontology building blocks
and make that vocabulary available to your user community.  After all, that is
the whole point of the extension mechanism.

> For poetry (see discussion for HTML5) in contrast to (X)HTML
> it is typically simple to cover the functionalities of poetry structures
> with or without specific requirements for graphical rendering with SVG,
> but for both  (X)HTML and SVG there is no idea of the semantical
> meaning of the elements used to markup poetry (for
> example 'strophe', '(strophe)line').
>
> To provide any useful functionality with role, it is important to
> have a larger list of predefined values either in the role
> specification itself or in the SVG recommendation it will be used for,
> else it will not be very reliable that the values of role have a meaning
> at all, if every group or any author has to create his own extension,
> it would be a big advantage to collect at least the text related things
> (see above) or even better the already known applications directly in
> the primary list:
> http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#XHTMLRoleModule
>   

See above.  We encourage you to coordinate with the WAI PF group on roles that
you consider of general use.  Beyond that, please define an SVG-specific
vocabulary.  Its the best way to ensure that you control its evolution and that
it gets developed and updated at a pace that your group is comfortable with.

> 3. The XHTML Role Attribute
> ---------------------------
>  
>> The following list represents some of the roles defined in the default 
vocabulary. They are intended to define regions of the document to help  orient
the user.
>>     
>
> Either make it a complete list, or mark the section as informative.
>   

We plan to remove the example entries from the Role document entirely.  We will

include some informative examples and a reference to the XHTMLVOCAB document as

the place where the current list can be found.

Thanks very much for your comments!

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2008 15:38:31 UTC