Re: Browsers will never get it right [was Re:Blocked-base parsing?]

On 9/15/05, Dimitri Glazkov <dimitri.glazkov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/15/05, Orion Adrian <orion.adrian@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have yet to see an RSS feed that says, best
> > viewed in X. That's an issue only when you allow styling code to be
> > determined by the author.
> 
> Let's not get too radical here. RSS only provides general structure of
> a list of stories. It does not define the actual content of an
> article. That is still the domain of HTML.

It is, but I don't see the success of RSS being that it replaces HTML,
but rather it removes CSS and Javascript from it while codifying
better the semantic structure of syndicated content allowing new
behavior.

> Orion, I see where you are going with this. However, the problem with
> this thinking is that on the end, you will end up simply reinventing
> HTML.

I'm not interested in reinventing HTML totally, though HTML is always
going through a revision process. And whose to say HTML isn't up for
grabs in terms of changes? I see the core of HTML as being very useful
and a good precedent, but there are many changes I make there for
different reasons than what I'm suggesting here.

> The reason why it is so easy to get excited about "advantages" of RSS
> over HTML is because RSS ignores the hard part of the job --
> structuring arbitrary content.

I could replace the HTML part of RSS with something simpler and still
get the same result. Let's say I only allowed img, h, section, ul, ol,
p, strong, and em; I'd still be doing pretty well. HTML doesn't fail
as much in its intention to mark up code. It fails in its intention to
be the basis of applications through CSS and Javascript.

> Also, have you heard of microformats (http://microformats.com/)?

I've been looking to microformats before they had that name. In fact
when I first got into XML I thought it would be used for XML until I
realized you couldn't just insert an XML tree into an element without
modifying the schema. That lead me to think about the fundamentals of
data. It's lead me to rally against tree-based structures, attributes,
namespaces as defined, schemas as defined, styling and behavior
defined by the server and a myriad of other things that aren't
appropriate for this list.

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Thursday, 15 September 2005 23:24:19 UTC