Re: Comments on HTML WG face to face meetings in France Oct 08

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008, Elliotte Harold wrote:
> 
> I'm more concerned about more radical changes like SAX or other 
> streaming APIs or document specific data bound models or even stranger 
> things. Is it plausible to extend the HTML 5 parsing model to cover 
> this?

Yes, there are at least two implemenations that I'm aware of (one of which 
is Henri's validator and is open source) that support SAX on top of the 
HTML5 parser spec, in a conforming manner.


> I also strongly question the wisdom of locking in one of the absolute 
> worst APIs we have. If there's one thing that needs replacing in the 
> HTML ecosystem, it's DOM. Sooner or later DOM will be replaced, and if 
> HTML 5 is standing in the way when that day comes, then HTML 5 is going 
> to come up the loser. Were the object model separable from the syntax 
> and semantics, then the sensible parts of HTML 5 would have a better 
> chance of surviving the transition.

Do you mean this transition to occur during HTML5's development? If so, 
feedback to that effect (e.g. with a plausible way of moving the Web from 
its billions of DOM-driven documents to some other model) would be useful, 
since nobody has yet actually proposed this.

Personally I don't think we will transition away from the DOM, and indeed 
one of our core principles is, as Hakon put it, "evolution not 
revolution", meaning that we don't replace things we just add to them.

I don't really see any coherent transition story that would get rid of the 
DOM from the Web platform any time soon (or ever).


If you mean for this transition to happen after HTML5's development, e.g. 
as part of HTML6, then the way that HTML5 is written from an editorial 
standpoint really has no bearing on the issue.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 18 November 2008 20:52:35 UTC