Linked by snydeq on Fri 28th Aug 2009 20:19 UTC
Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions whether the ideal of a truly standards-compliant Web will ever be possible given ongoing disagreements over HTML 5, including those most recently set in motion by Microsoft's latest concerns over the spec. "While some items on Microsoft's list seem like quibbles, others are valid issues," McAllister writes. And with others in the working group supporting the proposed additions in question as they stand, an impasse could conceivably be the end result. "Disagreements are an inevitable part of any standardization process. But if disagreements lead to irreconcilable differences, it calls in to question the validity of the final standard." So where does that leave HTML 5?
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Member since:
2005-07-17
Strict readability of code is an improvement.
I'd imagine latex2html5 would appreciate elements as straightly translatable as possible.
I agree with that. Especially for those who code HTML "manually", it would be an improvement if they could describe what some contextual element is, instead of describing how it should look like in the first place. Of course, the div and span tag allow to do so, but from my own experience in "HTML vs. LaTeX", I think the structural (vs. the visual) way is more comfortable. Not for everyone in every place, I'm sure, but still a promising approach. "
The whole point of HTML5 was that neither Microsoft nor the W3C was creating what DEVELOPERS and Browser makers needed so they formed WHATAG.
Things like header, footer, and the various formatting identifiers are important to screen readers and AJAX scripts reading web pages for other purposes. This lets them make assumptions about what's content and what's fluff. Things like "mark" take advantage that not all web browsers are dumb clients, some like Amaya allow reading and writing at the same time... we need more of that!!!
The people that developed HTML5 have spent years actually writing HTML pages! They've been doing it since before the 4.01 spec was final and they want shortcuts in the markup to follow the standard way pages are crafted after nearly 10 years of non-development.
The Microsoft guys are playing the typical game played in committees of showing up with big names, showing up late and unprepared, and "we didn't used to do it that way"... the point being not to construct solutions but simply to say they were at the meeting while not adding any more work to their plate.
My advice is to lock MS out of the talks, and let them find out on the 'tubes when it's done.