[xhtml2] User agent definition for XHTML 2.0

Hi,
This is a QA Review comment for "XHTML 2.0"
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml2-20060726/
2006-07-26
8th WD

About http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml2-20060726/terms.html

In the section "2. Terms and Definitions",

 "user agent
 any software that retrieves and renders Strictly 
 Conforming Documents for users. This may include 
 browsers, media players, plug-ins, and other programs 
 — including assistive technologies — that help in 
 retrieving and rendering such documents. See also 
 Conforming User Agent."
 
In this definition, search engine bots, parsers *and* authoring tools are excluded from the group of "user agents". Though the word "author"/"authoring"/etc is mentionned 77 times.

Excluding some type of user agents will be unlikely to favor interoperability AND to push forward XHTML 2.0 on some markets, like search engines for example. In the introduction, the specification explicitly says:

 "Integration with the Semantic Web: make XHTML2 amenable 
 for processing with semantic web tools."
 
And in the Document module

 "7.4. The body element
 The content may be processed by a user agent in a 
 variety of ways. […] and a search engine may create 
 an index prioritized according to properties of the 
 text."
 http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml2-20060726/mod-document.html




-- 
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, 17 August 2006 03:28:07 UTC