Re: Polyglot: the final thread?

Yandex hat on...

On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:15:46 +0100, Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>  
wrote:

> (chair hat on)
>
> Larry, I have added your e-mail [1] to the background reading for F2F  
> discussion of polyglot [2] .
>
> (TAG member hat on)
>
> I find Larry's note to be well reasoned and to the point, and in general  
> I agree with it. There is a point I would add. It's been mentioned  
> before, but not in Larry's note:
>
> * One important use for specifications like polyglot is for reference by  
> other specifications. The referring specifications might be open  
> standards, but might also be for use within an organization or  
> corporation.

Right.

> As I understand one of the arguments against a Polyglot recommendation  
> it's: "look, this is more or less happening anyway...the ability to do  
> polyglot is an emergent property of the HTML5 Recommendation". I.e. if  
> you want to write polyglot, nobody's stopping you.
>
> What I want in addition is to reference the rules for doing Polyglot  
> from another spec. I want to have, e.g., a vertical standards  
> organization or corporation write their own specs saying: "Web documents  
> published for use in the [dental, construction, ACME Corp, ... ]  
> community MUST include the markup specified here, and must additionally  
> be conforming polyglot HTML/XML documents as specified in [POLYGLOTREC]."

Yep. I'd like to have that. I agree it is basically an emergent property,  
but it is not as obvious as it might seem, and having the people who  
understand best what is emerging would be helpful.

> You could imagine, for example, the ATOM folks considering a formal  
> reference to polyglot had a polyglot spec been available at the time.

I can imagine people, who find working in english a major barrier to  
participation, referring to whatever spec they find and understand easily.  
Which is a good reason for W3C to write good ones about its technology.

> For me, this is an important reason to have a formal polyglot  
> specification suitable for normative reference.

That said, if the HTML group is doing the work of building a spec for its  
technology, I think the TAG should say "thank you, call us if you think we  
can help", and then get on with all the other things it could usefully do.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 18 March 2013 09:23:33 UTC