- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:11:46 -0700
- To: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
For the question of HTML extensibility, we have a handful of extensibility methods that we know about, all of which have shortcomings but at least can be enumerated, and the choices made known. I think it would be useful to come up with a common description of the extensibility framework and the kinds of considerations we might want to apply, independent of HTML and SVG and XML etc. but so that we agree on terminology and concepts and the nature (if not the weight) we apply to evaluating the options. I know much of this has been discussed, but I'm less sure anyone's done the enumeration of options as succinctly as I'd like: Consider languages YAML (yet another markup language) and YAML2 which consists of YAML with changes or new features or new extensions. How can senders communicate to receivers that they are speaking a different/extended language? How can receivers determine which language speakers were intending to speak. Extension methods include: 0) new MIME type & new namespace 1) same MIME type & new namespace 2) new MIME type & old namespace 3) same MIME type & same namespace In case (3), you definitely need also one of the following (and can use these in other cases): new element different DOCTYPE add a processing instruction add a version attribute add a version element add comments or other indications of versioning add a script which adds the processing link new content with a new URI scheme link new content with a URI to new content Considerations of when and how these versioning and extensibility elements include: What happens when you try to mix languages? What happens when authors copy/paste from one document to another? What happens when you want to create compound objects which contain both YAML and YAML2? What happens when you combine YAML2 and YAML3 How does a receiver looking at YAML2 output know whether they "understand" YAML2? What happens with legacy browsers? How does this interact with legacy content? Larry
Received on Wednesday, 18 March 2009 00:12:28 UTC