[whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 - what does it extend , definition of same,

[Matthew Thomas]

On 10 Jan, 2005, at 12:51 PM, Jim Ley wrote:
> ...
> Current web applications use HTML almost exclusively as a rendering
> language, they're not even using the document semantics available in
> HTML, it's just script and CSS dangling off of the HTML elements you
> need.

Sure. If Web applications were semantic they'd need HTML block elements 
such as <login>, <register>, <order>, and <post>. Since such elements 
would be of negligible benefit to any author or UA, there's no point in 
introducing their complexity (and authors can use <div> instead).

> Increasing the amount of HTML elements and form tipes out there
> doesn't change this fact, they're not going to do quite enough -
> There's the eternal problem of the declaritive, it can only go 80% of
> the way there, so you end up employing scripters who are much happier
> doing it all in script, the disciplines being different.
>
> If the WHAT WG's aim is to improve Web Application authoring, then
> it's scripting that needs to be helped, tweaking at the edge isn't
> going to do anything.

If the What-WG's work increases the average fraction of any particular 
application that is written in HTML or XHTML rather than script and/or 
arbitary XML, we do benefit. We all benefit currently, for example, 
from Amazon's and IMDb's databases showing up in Google search results 
-- which they wouldn't do if written entirely in script and/or FooML. 
(And the application hosts benefit in turn from the search engine 
traffic.)

> If the WHAT WG's aim is to discourage what they call street HTML,

No member of What-WG has called anything "street HTML", on the WG's 
site or (except at your insistent prompting) on this mailing list.

> then removing the ambiguity and the mess of the existing HTML and 
> de-facto specifications into something well grounded will be a lot 
> more useful than simply introducing more stuff that'll end up in the 
> variously implemented bin.
> ...

Removing ambiguity and mess of existing HTML and de-facto 
specifications is done in at least the following sections (I may have 
missed some):
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 2.3 (the "Radio buttons" part)
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 2.9
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 2.14
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 2.15 (the "max" part)
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 2.18
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 4.1
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 4.2
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 5.2
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 5.6
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 7.1 (the "accept" part)
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 7.2.1
*   Web Forms 2.0 section 8 (its introduction)
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 1.8
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 2
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 6.4
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 7
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 8.5
*   Web Applications 1.0 section 10.2.

Do you have any specific suggestions for ambiguity-and-mess removal, 
other than that already done in those sections?

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/