Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
On Jul 30, 2009, at 3:49 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
In at least two cases (declaring what Google, Yahoo!, CC and others
are doing with RDFa as non-conforming, and declaring what JAWS and
other tools support with the summary attribute as obsolete) I see
areas where I believe that intelligent people can reasonably disagree.
The second part of that sentence is not an accurate reflection of what
the spec says. It says that *using* the summary attribute is obsolete,
and incurs a mandatory validator warning, but there's nothing obsolete
about implementing it, as JAWS does.
I still believe that this is an area where intelligent people can
reasonably disagree.
It is theoretically possible to get all of the major browser vendors in
a room and get them to agree, and where the spec has documented such
agreement it is rock solid (yes, even in areas where it disagrees with
other specs).
It is not possible to do the same exercise with authors, and where the
spec attempts to influence behavior through mandatory warnings,
particularly when those warnings disagree with the the recommendations
of others and cases where the behavior produces observable behavior in
tools like popular tools like JAWS (and, I learned today that this
attribute is specifically exposed through Windows APIs to yet other
tools)... lets just say that I fully understand that this is an area
where intelligent people can disagree.
Here's an interesting side note: HTML5 actually has a hook for
open-ended extension by other
specs. <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#semantics-0> "Authors
must not use elements, attributes, and attribute values that are not
permitted by this specification or *other applicable specifications*."
[emphasis mine]
While less formal than the XHTML Modularization mechanism, it seems to
allow a specification external to HTML5 could define RDFa additions
without also having to copy the full text of HTML5. Validators could
then choose to support profiles that do or don't support RDFa, based on
market demand. I think a draft that just defined the RDFa additions
would engender less potential controversy than a full alternative draft
of all of HTML5.
I understand and agree with your overall point.
I question why this is suggested for RDFa but not for micro-data.
Regards,
Maciej
- Sam Ruby
