[whatwg] SPOOFED: Re: SPOOFED: Re: ---

[Leons Petrazickis]

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 6:29 AM, Pentasis <pentasis at lavabit.com> wrote:
>> I am not sure whether I understand you correctly... Of course the
>> practical use of a specification lies in its technical implementations, or
>> do you disagree with that? You are free to specify your own markup language,
>> but it will be useless if there is no kind of mechanism to interpret the
>> documents marked up that way. So I don't understand how the technical side
>> could be split away.
>
> Strictly speaking, does it matter for the DOM or parser or whatever, if a
> tag is named and used like: <abbr title="description">someword</abbr> or
> like this:
> <reference class="abbreviation" ttle="some
> description">someword</reference>.
> I don't see how that would make things technically different?
> The same applies for the difference in (for example) <code>blabla</code> or
> <p class=code>blabla</p>.

It matters in the sense that web browsers would have to implement both
approaches for backwards compatibility. Web site developers would then
be given a choice between a succinct approach that works in all
browsers and a verbose approach that only works in the newer ones.
Given such a choice, web site developers mostly prefer brevity and
compatibility, especially when working for a client.

Any change that tries to replace an existing feature with a more
complicated feature will likely not be adopted de facto, even if it is
enshrined in a de jure standard.

Standards that have tried to make changes like that -- XHTML2 comes to
mind -- have not been as successful as HTML4, as the loose dialect of
HTML4 in use on the web. HTML5 aims to be as successful as HTML4.
Adoption and usability are the twin goals -- not purity or
consistency.

This works everywhere and is brief:
<abbr title="description">someword</abbr>

This would only work in new browsers and is wordy:
<reference class="abbreviation" ttle="some description">someword</reference>.

It doesn't add any extra information. It's harder to use.
Conceptually, it may be more elegant, but conceptual elegance is not
an impetus for large scale adoptions. In my opinion, it is not a
worthwhile change to pursue, when there are so many actively broken
issues that can be fixed.

Regards,

Leons Petrazickis
http://lpetr.org/blog/