[whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.

[Mike Schinkel]

Matthew Raymond wrote:
>    I'm not always the most tactful or sensitive person. If my 
> choice of words in my original message offended you, I 
> apologize. My passion for a subject occasionally makes me 
> blind to how others might interpret my message.

Apology accepted.

>    If you really want to debate the original topic, I'll be 
> waiting. I'd be pleasantly surprised if this actually turned 
> into a discussion about semantic styling languages...

Can you please explain exactly what you mean about "semantic styling
languages?"  Do you mean the same as what Tantek refers to as "semantic
(X)HTML?" [1] I think of "styling" as relating to fonts, colors,
positioning, etc.

I decided to google for your various comments to try to get an understanding
of what you were talking about in past discussions and I was sure that you
had to have expressed this issue in the past. I found this link [2]. From it
I quote:

> The problem is that, for all the creative ways you can 
> use hCalendar/hCard, it's more complicated for webmasters 
> to read and understand and more complicated for 
> developers to implement. Furthermore, I dislike the entire 
> system of using class names as markup. Class names 
> should be reserved for user-defined semantics.

Is this the same issue?

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/

[1] http://tantek.com/presentations/20040928sdforumws/semantic-xhtml.html
[2]
http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-February/00
3116.html  

P.S. Based on some of your comments from [2] you might find that I am in
more agreement with you than you first assumed (or maybe not, I won't know
until I better understand your issues.)