Re: Separating core elements from domain-specific (was : code, samp, kbd, var)

Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote:
> But "dropping them" in this context would cost nothing; "dropping them"
> from a putative HTML 5 is not the same as "dropping them" in real life.

I thought you were taking a structuralist point of view, but the way
you are going no longer seems consistent with that.

> pure source code level).  Imagine an HTML that consisted only of
> those elements that we can be certain are required by virtually
> all classes of document : <html>, <head>, <title>, <script>, <style>,
> <meta>, <link>, <body>, <p>, <h$n$>, <ol>, <ul>, <li>, <a>, <img>,
> <object>, <table>, <div> and <span> (there may be others, but this

That's minimal neither in the sense that every class of document needs 
them nor in the sense that it provides a set of constructs which matches 
most authors want.  Unfortunately, I've only got a few minutes to write 
this before I head for the day job, so I don't have time to expand on 
that theme.

> suggestion is about concepts rather than detail).  And suppose that
> there were a mechanism by which additional elements could be used,
> so long as a suitable definition thereof was provided, using (say)
>     
>     <link rel="HTML-Dialect" href="wherever">

Congratulations :-(.  You have just *re*-invented DOCTYPE, in particular 
internal subsets.  Specifying the language within the main part of the 
document is just wrong!  (This also has similarities to xmlns=....)

> 
> Then, if a particular author needed <var>, <code>, <samp> and <kbd>,
> and if these were provided by (say)
> 
>     http://www.whatwg.org/html/dialects/informatics

<var> is a much wider concept than informatics.  Its origins are in 
mathematics, but it is useful in a much wider field.  "informatics" 
implies a niche for <samp> and <kbd>, when these are actually concepts 
that anyone who writes HTML, uses a mobile phone, or almost any other 
piece of modern technology, are familiar with.

> If we /could/ move in this direction, I think that the WHATWG would find
> that a great deal of the present resistance to their proposals would
> disappear ...

You would get resistance from me, and, as this is basically the W3C 
model for XHTML (with XHTML 1.0 as an aberration), I think the WHATWG 
will object, because one of their objections to W3C standards seems to 
be the use of modular standards.

Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2007 06:44:46 UTC