[whatwg] Add 'type' attribute to <mark>

Pentasis pentasis at lavabit.com
Sun Nov 2 09:49:32 PST 2008


>> All I can say is that I think discussions on this list are of a very 
>> closed,
>> almost defensive nature. But perhaps that is my own fault.
> Your only fault, just like me, was to believe this was a serious place
> for discussion. But it isn't: it is just a tool: feedback "praising"
> the spec will be kept well safe, while feedback suggesting anything
> that was not the idea of browser vendors gets buried in
> side-discussions or simply ignored. In the end, feedback is not being
> used to improve the spec, but to hide the fact that it is nothing else
> than the tyrannical imposition of browser vendors upon the entire Web.
> So once they go through and publish HTML5 as a recommendation or
> standard, they will use all this filtered, non-representative
> feedback, to claim that it was defined by the entire Web community.
> But the truth is that browser vendors will do whatever they please,
> just like they did before the W3C existed, only that they are now also
> trying to attach it the "standard" tag.
> Maybe I'm completely wrong on this but, since I joined this list few
> months ago, I have seen absolutelly nothing that could make me think I
> am.

I had my doubts when I heard browser vendors were going to do the next 
standard. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, I had high hopes as 
well. I read both the X/HTML5 and the XHTML2 spec over the past two months, 
and if I was given a choice (but that is personal ofcourse) I would choose 
XHTML2 without a second thought. Despite the fact that it (too) is very 
inaccessible. At least it is less bloated and less stringent. The X/HTML 
spec reads too much like a law and leave little or no room for the creative 
designer minds that eventually need to work with it.
I am slowely but seriously contemplating organising the designer world and 
creating our own standards. these browsers have been nothing but troubles 
since the first day of the internet. First a "war", then it was slow and bad 
implementation of standards, and now it is creating a new standard which is 
unusable in a practical sense for designers. (and it won't guarantee anyone 
that it will mean all browsers will be standards compliant, so what is the 
point?) As a designer all I want is a standard that enables me to design and 
to comply to usability, accessibility etc. without having to worry about UAs 
breaking or doing things differently just because someone thought: "wow, 
look we can do that...how gimmicky. Let us implement it".
Browser vendors should equally comply to standards and simply make browsers 
user friendly. Neither designers nor UA manufacturers have any business of 
writing specs!
Well, sorry for the rant, but this is just another sad example I think of 
free market and free speech being abused.





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