[whatwg] whatwg Digest, Vol 33, Issue 90

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

FROIDURE Nicolas wrote:

> Maybe that the DTD syntax could be use. The official DTD for W3C
> standards and a personal DTD for other languages. In all cases, i
> think that bbcode, wiki and other 'easy' web languages with disappear
> when browsers will include real WYSIWYG editors.

HTML5 won't have a DTD. None of the other languages have a DTD since
they aren't SGML. XHTML is moving towards schemas of various sorts,
which aren't DTDs either.

Also, while I recognize you're the developer of a WYSIWIG extension, I
don't think WYSIWIG is a workable conceptual model for HTML authoring
since (X)HTML is all about what you mean, not what you see. But I do
hope the inclusion of textarea format expectations will lead to the
development of editors more suited for (X)HTML authoring.

> Maybe a syntax like this could be used :
> W3C official types list : PHP4 | PHP5 | JS | Java | (...) | _*
>   The _ prefix should be used for personal (or non official) types.
> Maybe another attribute indicating the plugin needed could improve the
> functionality of this new feature.

Why would you need a plugin for <code/> ?

> It's strange. The em implementation in the CSS is approaching of the
> first option. I think a degree attribute could correspond to the
> font-weight graduation implemented with CSS.

I don't follow this. What's wrong with:

em { font-style: italic; }
em em { font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; }

As opposed to:

em[degree=1] { font-style: italic }
em[degree=2] { font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; }

> Will the HTML5 stop the XHTML 2 progression (i prefer use XML...) ?
> 
It's up to W3C really. They're being a bit vague:

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/166

Currently, Web Applications 1.0 and XHTML 2 are both proceeding. Web
Applications 1.0 has two serializations: an HTML serialization and a
(slightly) richer XHTML serialization. Unfortunately, the current plan
is for both "XHTML 5" (as Web Applications 1.0's XHTML serialization is
jocularly called) and XHTML 2 to use the same namespace, so they will
have to be distinguished by their schemas instead.

I personally suspect XHTML 2 development will continue. Web Applications
1.0's big strength, backwards compatibility, is simultaneously a
weakness from which XHTML 2 need not suffer.

If we develop standardized methodologies for negotiating and
transforming content, toolsets which produce conformant DOMs rather than
tag soup, and sufficiently detailed microformats, then transforming
between HTML2, HTML5, and XHTML2 needn't be a huge problem.

Like others also active on the www-html mailing list, I see no
contradiction between expending effort on both drafts.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis