[xhtml-role] Extensibility - New values for role attributes

Hi,
This is a QA Review comment for "XHTML Role Attribute Module"
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml-role-20060725/
2006-07-25
1st WD

About http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml-role-20060725/#s_role_module_attributes

The topic of extensibility of values of role attribute is touched in this paragraph.

 "It is possible to define additional role values. 
 Such values MUST be defined in their own namespace. 
 Note that current best practice is that the URI 
 associated with that namespace resolve to a resource 
 that allows for the discovery of the definition of 
 the roles in the namespace. Example definitions include 
 the RDF Schema for the XHTML role attribute values in 
 Appendix B, and the Web Accessibility Initiative's work 
 on an RDF Taxonomy [WAIRDF]."

1. Create a dedicated section and give it as title "Extensions"
   http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#likehood-extension-principle
2. Define *clearly* the extension mechanism. It has been one of the problems of HTML 4.01 and profile URIs with no clear mechanism to define new set of values for the class attributes.
   which has led to http://www.gmpg.org/xmdp/ from a part of the community to ensure interoperability.
 If there is a current best practice, make it explicit
 If there is a way to have a common format and/or schema to extend the values, make it explicit, it will improve interoperability between implementations.
 
 Defining the mechanism will make sure that tools can fully benefits of these modules. We can imagine for example an authoring tool being given a namespace is able to load the set of values and their definitions to help a author to use the values in their document and have the UI taking into account these values. 
 It would help search engines to associate meanings to value by giving more context. 
 It would help a user agent to give more information about something in a web page.




-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
   QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
      *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***

Received on Thursday, 10 August 2006 07:38:42 UTC