content control: other precedents besides OBJECT element in HTML4

In the content guidelines group interchange with the HTML working group on
Friday we were talking about the "management of planned change" in the area of
the IMG element and reforms to be sought in XHTML 2.0.  Josh or someone
suggested that OBJECT doesn't always have the content control moves to express
what one wants to provide as universal content.  I started spouting references
to other constructs in other formats, and Gregg said "you may have to write
that down and spell it out."

So here are some annotated citations which are important for a review of
content control in "the future of the web as a medium comprising semi-encoded
communication."

Rules for user management of show/hide/minimize decisions in the 'final' [mix
and] form of content are provided in [the current draft of] the User Agent
Accessibility Guidelines[1].  The 'final' form is the form which the content
takes in the actual user interface[2].  How 'final' the exchanged form should
be is the subject of considerable debate, but there is a provisional agreement
within the PF working group on a concept that the working group is striving to
capture for the XML GL guidelines on creating XML based accessible
applications
[member-restricted references only at the moment, public draft in
development].

[1] 2. Ensure user access to all content.
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20010224/#gl-content-access>http://www.
w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20010224/#gl-content-access

[2] HCI Fundamentals and PWD Failure Modes
<http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ud4grid/#_Toc495220368>http://trace.wisc.edu/do
cs/ud4grid/#_Toc495220368

In particular, SMIL 2.0 defines modules devoted to content control[3], and the
possible patterns that one can create using SMIL 2.0 content control are more
flexible or varied than the content control pattern that is created by a
nested
family of OBJECT elements in XHTML 1.1 or HTML 4.01 [4].  Note that up through
XHTML 1.1, the behavior of markup in XHTML is strictly derived from the HTML
version.  This, however, will no longer be true for XHTML 2.x.

[3] 4. The SMIL 2.0 Content Control Modules
<http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20/smil-content.html>http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20/
smil-content.html

[4] OBJECT
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#edef-OBJECT>http://www.w3
.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#edef-OBJECT

A third area of activity that is important here is the progress of the RUBY
markup construct [5].  There are some tensions between the goals in making
this
transparently obvious as used to control the print rendering of Japanese, and
making it broad and flexible so it is a generic content control feature for
device-independent content containing words or phrases with non-obvious
meanings or pronunciations, as currently encoded with abbreviation or acronym
elements [6].

[5] Ruby Annotation
<http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/>http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/

[6] w3c-wai-ig@w3.org from January to March 2000: RE: ABBR vs. ACRO[...] 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2000JanMar/0610.html>http:/
/lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2000JanMar/0610.html

Al

Received on Sunday, 4 March 2001 14:34:18 UTC