[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XHTML 2.0: the one bright light?? (Was: linking, 80/20)
Andrew Watt writes: > Really?? > > Can you expound on why you believe XHTML 2.0 to be a "bright light"? > > For example ... For whom? To achieve what? I can't speak for Jelks, but I'm happy to report that I consider XHTML to be a rare W3C spec where: 1) The needs of human writer/editors and computer processors are both considered important, with well-formedness the only major tilt toward the computer in years - one with clear benefits for the humans in toolkit access (XSLT, etc.) Keeping namespaces to an absolute minimum is part of that. (And no, I don't blame the WG for the three-namespaces-in-XHTML stupidity that eventually disappeared.) 2) The working group has restrained itself from piling on thousands of so-called features and then telling users they can just ignore the ones they don't want to use since the interactions couldn't possibly be important. 3) The working group has stuck to a familiar idiom over the last few years, fixing primarily broken parts (forms, frames) on an as-needed basis. 4) While they can certainly work with other W3C specs, they've stuck primarily to a core group that users loudly want - and whose working groups took the importance of interaction with XHTML seriously. 5) While I think modularization was an utter waste of time, it doesn't affect users working on documents. (2.0 finally provides more substantive features to sell users, so I think that will be less of a problem moving forward.) While I'm thoroughly annoyed with the shroud of silence over W3C process, I can't complain about the work the XHTML WG has done as far as keeping it focused on Web developers. HTML and XHTML along with CSS seem to be the only parts of W3C activity that still reach most "Web developers" per se, though SVG and XSLT are on the radar. I have to give them a lot of credit for doing that even while the rest of the W3C appears to have wandered off into other work. Is this a bright and shining star? I think so. From my outside perspective, the only stars near as bright were the XML Working Group before the W3C decided that XML was important, and possibly the XSLT 1.0 work... I worry about RDF (and URIs generally) poisoning XML, and I worry about an RDF/URI/Schema-poisoned XML poisoning XHTML. So far, I think XHTML has chosen carefully and avoided the really toxic bits. ------------- Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA http://simonstl.com may be my URI http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
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