[whatwg] Re: Is this introducing incompatibilities with future W3C work

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
>
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:58:36 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > | Namespace proliferation is a problem. Even fairly modest documents now
> > | require a huge raft of declarations at the top. As the author of an
> > | O'Reilly book on XForms, I can report that 90% of the technical
> > | questions from readers involve confusion related to namespaces.
> > - http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/papers/verity.html
>
> Interesting, as that's not my experience in other XML languages, even
> when introducing RDF to users don't seem to have that problem, and
> they're positively crazy with me, I guess we're just looking at
> different users.

Most authors are completely incapable of even remotely understanding RDF.
At least, most of the authors I talk to. Then again, based on the
www-validator mailing list, many authors have trouble understanding
entites, let alone RDF or namespaces. These are part of WHATWG's target
audience.


>> IE6 is only a concern because compatibility with IE6 is a concern of Web
>> authors. The main motivation of WF2 (and all of WHATWG) is authors.
>
> Right, Then I think it would be good if you could get some Authoring
> Tool companies on board, they'll have useful things to say I'm sure.

This is an open mailing list. Anyone can post. (For what it's worth, I'm
aware of at least one authoring tool implementor on the list.)


> > > no-one's yet explained how HTML 4 and XHTML 1 really create a migration
> > > path, could you explain now perhaps?
> >
> > XHTML 1.0 appendix C claims to describe such a migration path.
>
> Yes, but it doesn't - so I guess you're conceding there isn't one -

That's a W3C issue, really.


> why not just an HTML vocabulary though (then you don't need to pollute
> namespaces you don't control)

Because to UAs that implement both, there is no difference between HTML4
and XHTML1.


>>> Yes, but you've still not told us the roadmap
>>
>> * Publish WF2 snapshot this weekend.
>> * Iterate WF2 until we agree it is as good as we're going to get it
>>   without real-world experience.
>> * Create WF2 test suite.
>> * Create WF2 experimental implementations, to obtain implementation
>>   feedback.
>> * Update the spec based on implementation feedback.
>> * Submit WF2 to standards organisation as basis for HTML extensions.
>
> Great, any idea how long this might take?

None whatsoever. "When it's ready."

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