[whatwg] Re: some issues

[Malcolm Rowe]

Jim Ley writes:
> So, as has been proposed, things like specific CSS properties for
> styling date pickers, will be raised in the W3C CSS WG ?

Sounds reasonable to me. WF2 controls could be styled via CSS in just the 
same way as any other form control. You even have exactly the same problems 
 -- no way to tell how a given UA might implement a file upload control, for 
example. But WF2 doesn't appear to create any new complexities that don't 
already exist for this class of problem. 

>> Also, Web Forms 2 doesn't change HTML, it merely extends it
> So there'll be no changes to the SGML declaration, and we'll still get
> to use SHORTTAG and stuff?

You could be a little less cryptic - are you saying that the DOCTYPE that 
Ian's currently suggesting that WF2 documents will use (which has a note 
that says it's temporary) prevents SHORTTAG features (attribute minimisation 
and unquoted attribute literals, for example) from being used in WF2 
documents? And you're worried that this will continue once the DOCTYPE is 
finalised? 

If so, I guess that the only reason that this is the case presently is that 
there's currently no WF2 DTD (though I think someone - fantasai? - offered 
to write one), and so there's nowhere to stick a 'SHORTTAG YES' declaration. 

Of course, HTML UA's don't really use an SGML DTD to parse HTML in the first 
place, and don't support some valid SGML SHORTTAG features either (NET, for 
example), so it's not as if you were ever 'really' able to use all of 
SHORTTAG anyway, except in a limited sense, and it's not like temporarily 
being without a DTD would prevent UA's from interpreting WF2 HTML. 

Anyway, I would be *extremely* surprised if a WF2 DTD were to be produced 
which caused valid HTML4 documents not to be valid 'HTML4 with WF2' 
documents. Is there any reason you seriously believe that this might be the 
case, or are you just trying to pick holes in things? 

[I haven't been following this conversation, so I snipped the XML/XHTML part 
without comment - I didn't understand it just from the text that was 
included]. 

Regards,
Malcolm
(disclaimer: definitely *not* an SGML guru)