more xhtml 2.0 comments

More comments about XHTML 2.0. Each entry below has references at the end of
the message. Message x-posted to www-html-editor.

0. the lack of DTD is a very big problem. The HTML WG should not release other
    XHTML WD without DTD.
1. the head element should not exist any more. It's a useless container for
    metadata.
2. the body element should not exist any more. It's a useless container for
    data since we already have the root of the document. It's also conflicting
    with the root document from a rendering point of view (remember the HTML 4
    BODY carrying the background of the document ?)
3. the xml-stylesheet PI and the link element are conflicting
4. the link element and the src attribute on the style element are conflicting
5. metadata meta elements are only allowed at document's level but can't be
    scoped on a per-element basis
6. stylesheets can't be scoped on a per-element basis
7. deprecating h1-h6 is a performance hit for web browsers. If the h element is
    introduced with the section element, a default stylesheet for XHTML 2.0 will
    need

      section > h                     { ... }
      section > section > h           { ... }
      section > section > section > h { ... }
      ...

    that's _considerably_ slower than

     h1 { ... }
     ...
     h6 { ... }

    More generally, I am under the impression that browser performance has not
    been taken under consideration for the design of XHTML 2.0.
8. I do not understand how the DTD will reflect the modularization
9. the definition of deprecated is not normative
10. the title attribute has a special meaning for the link element and
    therefore cannot serve as an extra advisory information. Title and alternate
    style set should be independent.
11. the notion of linguistic root of a word added as a note here seems to me
    completely crazy.
12. the definition of the dir attribute is exactly what I called in my previous
    messages a normative definition of an xhtml attribute using a css
    redundancy. If it can be done there, it can be done elsewhere. For example
    the edit attribute where the prose assigns the default rendering 'display:
    none' to 'edit="deleted"'.
13. by the way, that default rendering of 'display: none' for 'edit="deleted"'
    is valid only for browsing environments. In an editing environment, the
    default rendering of 'edit="deleted"' would probably be 'text-decoration:
    line-through; color: red' or something equivalent.
14. the Datetime format is not defined in the WD
15. the definition of the href attribute does not say what means 'activated'
16. how can be specified the language of an object designated by a cite
    attribute ?
17. I don't understand why access-key is in XHTML2. In the XHTML2 spirit as
    described in the introduction of the document, it should not be here.
    Furthermore, system-dependant and language-dependant common practices make
    this completely unusable.
18. the navindex attribute seems to me the worst choice of all for that
    feature. Having this defined by an integer is a design mistake in a
    structured XML-based world. This should be defined by ID and an IDREF:

    <table>
    <tr><td href="a" nextlink="link2">NW</td>
        <td href="c" id="link3" nextlink="link4">NE</td></tr>
    <tr><td href="b" id="link2" nextlink="link3">SW</td>
        <td href="d" id="link4">SE</td></tr>
    </table>

19. as I said above in item 4, the src attribute conflicts with other element.
20. I find the nl element useless.
21. the duplication of the title element is a closed issue if the head and body
    elements are removed (see items 1 and 2 above)
22. I am still completely opposed to the l element. The manipulation of this
    element in wysiwyg editors will be too hard in comparison with the existing
    <br> in HTML4. If you really want to extract presentation from the markup
    here, use a processing instruction <?line-break?> instead of <br>.
23. don't introduce the nr element, reuse MathML if that's really needed.
24. the address element should be improved, I agree. But not using the l
    element has it has often been proposed. That's not enough.
25. the cite element is not needed, it is redundant with an anchor having
    something like rel=cite (for instance).
26. removing the hr element is counter-productive; renaming it is useless, keep
    it simple and stupid.
27. the modification of the model of the paragraph p element will drastically
    impact editing environements. Most editors rely on the inline/block
    discrimination to handle user input, in particular when the user presses the
    Enter key. I see this change as a nice structural change, unfortunately
    totally overkill for vendors. You can't say at the same time "XHTML 2.0 will
    be edited by tools and not by hand" and complexify that way the language so
    that editors will hardly handle it.
28. in the spirit of XHTML 2.0, the pre element should not exist. The
    non-collapsable spaces should be &nbsp; and the lines should be materialized
    by <br> or <l> element. I am, as I said above, completely opposed to <l> and
    I am in favor of keeping <pre>.
29. if an element carries both the href attribute and the cite attribute, how
    can the link to the cite URI be activated?
30. an h element child of the body is redundant with a title element child of
    body as in item 21.
31. sub and sup elements are purely presentational and do not carry any
    semantics
32. the a element is useless since any element can carry an href attribute.
33. if the a element is preserved, it should not serve as source AND target of
    a link. Named anchors should be removed from the spec and only an ID should
    allow to target an element using an URL with a fragment id.
34. the label element should be called title and should be allowed in ul/ol/dl.
    I already said that I find nl useless.
35. the lack of the value and start attributes on ol and li elements are a
    major mistake extensively discussed in www-style@w3.org.
36. section 15.2.4 is just a denial of the progressive rendering... Does the
    HTML WG really think that browsers are not going to start rendering very
    long documents if the network makes the retrieval too long from a user's
    perspective? This parargraph seems to me unapplicable in dynamic
    environments.
37. just for the record, the lack of style attribute is a major error, recently
    fixed by the HTML and the CSS WG jointly.
38. the style and link elements still lack a disabled attribute. Please note
    that this attribute **is** in DOM Level 2 Style.
39. the removal of the "_blank" value for the target attribute seems to me an
    error.
40. why isn't XFrames merged with XHTML 2.0 ?
41. I still think that the removal of B, I and U is a major error for the Web.
    One may want to annotate visually a document without adding any semantic.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#a_xhtml20_dtd_issue_0
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_7.2.
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_7.4.
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#styleSheet_external
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_12.1.
     http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#adef_attribute-collections_src
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_13.1.
[6] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_styleSheetmodule
[7] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_textmodule_issue_4
     http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#edef_text_h
[9] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#a_terms
[10] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Core
[11] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_attribute-collectionsmodule_issue_0
[12] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Bi-directional
      http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Edit
[13] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Edit
[14] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Edit
[15] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[16] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[17] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[18] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[19] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Embedding
[20] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_10.2.
[21] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_structuremodule_issue_2
[22] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.12.
[23] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_textmodule_issue_2
[24] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.2.
[25] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.4.
[26] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_textmodule_issue_5
[27] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.13.
[28] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.14.
[29] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[30] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#edef_text_h
[31] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.20.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_8.21.
[32] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_9.1.
[33] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_9.1.
[34] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_10.5.
[35] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#s_listmodule
[36] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_15.2.4.
[38] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_16.1.
      http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#sec_12.1.

http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Style/stylesheets.html#StyleSheets-StyleSheet
[39] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml2.html#col_Hypertext
[40] http://www.w3.org/TR/xframes/

</Daniel>

Received on Monday, 14 April 2003 04:39:27 UTC