On May 27, 2008, at 11:56 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
(In particular, I think we really need to get over the concept of "but
that's a host language issue" or "that doesn't belong in my spec"
and so
on -- we're defining a single platform here, it isn't useful for us
to be
declining responsibility over the more complicated parts. While the
theory
of orthogonal technologies would have been nice, the Web is at a point
where all the technologies are embedded in each other to some
extent, and
we should embrace that, not try to deny it. We will have a healthier
technology stack if we consider the HTML and SVG specs, say, to be
different chapters of the same language spec, rather than if we
consider
them to be separate languages.)
I strongly agree with this sentiment. I strongly prefer if similar
concepts shared between SVG and HTML can be defined in a consistent
way in a single place. I would say many parts of HTML5 arguably fall
in this category and I am ok with them being in HTML5 mainly as a
matter of expediency, and I hope that in time these things can be
factored out. Every little thing like this that is different is a
point of pain for implementors of and authors in the emerging Web
platform that includes both HTML and SVG.
If any such items can be factored sooner rather than later, then that
will be welcome news. I apologize also for the item I volunteered to
factor out but have not taken to completion (the Window object). It
turned out to be a lot harder to do than I expected going in.
Regards,
Maciej
