Re: XHTML 2.0 considered harmful

Jonny Axelsson wrote:

> That said, I think it is healthy to discuss whether any new
> specification has a rationale, and that discussion should
> preferably not take place among the authors. I am one of the
> authors and thus disqualified, but I believe XHTML 2.0 is a
> worthwhile effort. 

I am glad to see that another HTML WG member participates in this
thread given the amazingly poor interest it seems to trigger
in w3c-html-wg@w3.org or in the minutes of your last conference
calls.

> I do not agree with the interpretation of "While the ancestry of
> XHTML 2 comes from HTML 4, XHTML 1.0, and XHTML 1.1, it is not
> intended to be backward compatible with its earlier versions." that
> is wielded around the net. The goal isn't, and should not be, to
> make Yet Another Hypertext Markup Language. Backwards incompatibility
> is to be avoided, change is bad. 

I am afraid to understand... Are you really saying that the goal of
XHTML2 isn't, and should not be, the successor of  HyperText Markup
Language ?

> Much of the "XHTML 2.0 is an utter failure and waste of time" line
> of argument boils down to "we don't want to lose the style attribute.

Not at all. I have a lot of concerns about XHTML 2, the style attribute
being only one of them. I agree it's an important one, but definitely
not the only one.

Just for the record and in case it was not clear enough, Microsoft, a
very small player in our world of browser implementors and
standardizers, seems to have clearly and officially expressed here, by
the word of his rep Tantek Çelik,  that it does not really understand
what XHTML 2 is aimed at and what it is useful for. Tantek, please
correct me if I am wrong, but that's how I understood your "considered
harmful" message.
Does it fall in the "we don't want to lose the style attribute"
category too ?

> In my opinion, this issue isn't of that great an importance,

Because you don't make an editing tool. The day you'll embed Opera into
an editor based on this XHTML2, you'll understand.

> but the argument by DOM [2] bears some weight with me. 

Then read
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003Jan/0265.html.


</Daniel>



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Received on Thursday, 16 January 2003 05:12:35 UTC