[whatwg] microformats incompatible with WebApps 1.0 ?

[Karl Dubost]

Le 12 déc. 2006 à 14:10, Ian Hickson a écrit :
> There is no contradiction here as I assume you are implying. The  
> context
> is extension mechanisms. It is important to have well-defined  
> extension
> mechanisms, to allow for authors to experiment and address their needs
> without having to affect all users of the technology.

completely agreed and you know why. :)
http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/

> It is equally
> important to ensure that such extension mechanisms are well-scoped  
> so that
> future extensions to the language itself aren't constrained, as has
> happened in certain areas (for example, when it comes to the  
> parsing of
> certain elements). Extension mechanisms benefit from forethought,  
> but do
> not require it. Experience gained from the creation of extension
> mechanisms by subsets of the community can contribute towards the
> development of the language as a whole.

Agreed again. I think we both agree on the general idea, but not with  
the process.

>> Morality: if you are a community with needs, microformats, sw,  
>> etc. do
>> whatever you want, it doesn't matter that much :) The Web is  
>> already 97%
>> invalid. It will be more tag soup BUT at least once you have  
>> reached a
>> critical mass, people will formalized in a specs your practices which
>> were once done.
>
> I'm going to assume this is just a troll.

Sorry if it was taken as a troll. But it is the feeling I have since  
I followed the discussion here for the last year or two. It seems  
there is a sound resistance to progress on certain topics. I  
completely agree that consensus is a long process. But I have  
difficulties to see sometimes how you decide about some extension.
We can take RDFa/microformats and include patterns. There are things  
which we can not do these days because the solution of microformats  
is incomplete. It doesn't dismiss the microformats at all. It just  
mean that some communities need more.


>> question: why do we create specs?
>
> To ensure interoperability between products from different groups of
> people, in a fashion that addresses the majority of the needs of those
> groups. More specifically in the case of Web specifications, to ensure
> that content written by one group of people will be understood to  
> mean the
> same thing by all its readers, and will be processed in the same  
> way by
> all software, even if the software was not written with that  
> content in
> mind.

Agreed again. But I'm not sure we have always the same idea of what  
is needed, which is also part of the process.

I think it would help to have a rationale behind each decision or at  
least showing the different solution which have been proposed. A bit  
like wikipedia when an article is put online, there is an equilibrium  
showing the two points of view or more if any. I think that is  
healthy in the sense because sharing ideas without wiping out others  
make all of us richer more than having resistance which sounds like  
you against the world (which might not be healthy for yourself as well.)

Again sorry for the mischaracterization, but really in the need to  
understand how the things are processed.

-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
   QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
      *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***