Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2007-06-18 Thread Ian Hickson
On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, Thomas Broyer wrote:
> 
> However, text/xml-script would result in a parse-error in HTML5 (if I 
> understand section 9.2 correctly).

I've removed the parse error.

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-22 Thread Spartanicus
"Mike Schinkel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a
 standards- compliance agenda.
>>> 
>>> Who is?
>> 
>> A better question to ask would be "to whom does it matter?".
>
>Is it really relevant to give your opinion of my grammer?

I didn't, "who is [in the business of enforcing a standards- compliance
agenda]" is a different question than "to whom does [standards
compliance] matter". I wanted to make the point that standards
compliance is in itself irrelevant to SE users/the average web user.

>> SE's have nothing to gain from markup validity. 
>
>Of course they do.  Better markup makes the results of their web page
>analysis more accurate, especially when semantic markup is involved.  That
>can lead to better search engine results.

I'm not seeing much evidence of that. Afaics SEs are interested in text
content, links, title content and if you're lucky they may treat header
content slightly differently. They seem to treat the most of the other
angled bracket stuff as noise, and justifiably so.

Proper semantics and correctly structured content could be of benefit,
but that is a very different, and much higher goal than mere compliance
with the technical rules of a markup language.

Markup validity is irrelevant to SEs, not only do they currently not
care about it, they likely never will, since there's nothing to be
gained from it.

>> They should serve up results relevant to their users, 
>
>Again, you state "should" as if you are quoting from an authority. In a free
>market, I'm not aware of such an authority except in limited cases where I
>don't see that this applies.  So "should" is just your narrow viewed opinion
>which is no more "correct" than my broader viewed opinion.

"should" (in lower case) should not  be read as per  RFC 2119, that
should be (I'm a bad boy) reserved to the upper case usage of the word.

I'm going back to lurk mode, as I've strayed well beyond the purpose of
this list (sorry).

-- 
Spartanicus

(email whitelist in use, non list-server mail will not be seen)


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-22 Thread Mike Schinkel
Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2006, at 15:06, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> 
>> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>> Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a
>>> standards- compliance agenda.
>> 
>> Who is?
> 
> I may be missing something obvious, but I can't think of
> anyone who'd by in the business of enforcing Web standards
> per se. Depending on country, disability interest groups
> (what's the right term?) or governments may in the "business"
> of enforcing accessibility, which is related.

It was a rhetorical question to make the point you just made.

> Presumably, they care about moving Web apps forward. That
> doesn't mean their business includes *enforcing* standards by
> putting violators on the stocks.

Agreed.  But it is something that could potentially see a lot of improvement
compared to status quo, and I can't think of nor have I heard any other
proposals for anything else that would. And certainly the current situation
is suboptimal.

> I think this mailing list is not the right place to speculate
> what search engines could or won't do. I suggest pitching the
> enforcement ideas to search engine providers directly.

My problem is I don't know anyone at those search engines to pitch to, and
unfortunately I don't currently have the funding to devote any more time to
it than to float a trial balloon. I did that here hoping someone at one of
the three would think it something to consider...  (But I'm happy to
terminate discussion on it here, but we all should do the same.)

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/





Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-22 Thread Henri Sivonen

On Dec 21, 2006, at 15:06, Mike Schinkel wrote:


Henri Sivonen wrote:

Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a
standards- compliance agenda.


Who is?


I may be missing something obvious, but I can't think of anyone who'd  
by in the business of enforcing Web standards per se. Depending on  
country, disability interest groups (what's the right term?) or  
governments may in the "business" of enforcing accessibility, which  
is related.


(I think I am not in the business of enforcing standards. I am in the  
business of developing a quality assurance tool.)



And at the risk of sounding snarky, can you point me to a
reference where is it codified that they are not (at least  
partially) in the

business of standards?


Using standards in their business and contributing to standards is  
different from having enforcement as part of business.



P.S. Ian works for Google and he sure seems pretty adamant about
standards...


Presumably, they care about moving Web apps forward. That doesn't  
mean their business includes *enforcing* standards by putting  
violators on the stocks.


I think this mailing list is not the right place to speculate what  
search engines could or won't do. I suggest pitching the enforcement  
ideas to search engine providers directly.


--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-22 Thread Mike Schinkel
Spartanicus wrote:
> "Mike Schinkel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>> Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a
>>> standards- compliance agenda.
>> 
>> Who is?
> 
> A better question to ask would be "to whom does it matter?".

Is it really relevant to give your opinion of my grammer?

> SE's have nothing to gain from markup validity. 

Of course they do.  Better markup makes the results of their web page
analysis more accurate, especially when semantic markup is involved.  That
can lead to better search engine results.

> They should serve up results relevant to their users, 

Again, you state "should" as if you are quoting from an authority. In a free
market, I'm not aware of such an authority except in limited cases where I
don't see that this applies.  So "should" is just your narrow viewed opinion
which is no more "correct" than my broader viewed opinion.

>> And at the risk of sounding snarky, can you point me to a reference
>> where is it codified that they are not (at least partially) in the
>> business of standards?
> 
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tech.msn.com
> 
> Should give some indication.

This only indicates that they don't observe standards themseleves, not "what
business they are in." "Cobbler's children go barefoot," as they say.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-21 Thread Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Mike Schinkel asked:
> And at the risk of sounding snarky, can you point me to a
> reference where is it codified that they are not (at least partially) in the
> business of standards? 

Spartanicus answered:
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tech.msn.com
> 
> Should give some indication.


A few counter-examples. Google's lazy hypocrisy
[ http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/google_valid_and_strict/ ]
on the issue notwithstanding, their Webmaster Guidelines do say that
webmasters should use "correct HTML" to "help Google find, index, and
rank your site":

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

MSN's "Guidelines for successful indexing" for site owners are buried in
a fabulous Ajax help system where you can't create deep links to content
(ahem), but they state that we should "Use only well-formed HTML code in
your pages. Make sure that all tags are closed, and that all links open
the correct web page."

Yahoo wants "Good web design in general", which obviously (cough!)
includes using valid markup:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html

So all three search engines claim or imply that web standards help them
correctly index the web, which /is/ their business.

And as all three search engines are a blackbox, webmasters should
obviously be taking them at their word. (Tumbleweed rolls past ...)

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-21 Thread Spartanicus
"Mike Schinkel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a 
>> standards- compliance agenda.
>
>Who is?

A better question to ask would be "to whom does it matter?". SE's have
nothing to gain from markup validity. They should serve up results
relevant to their users, their users use tag soup parsers with error
correcting mechanisms.

What might be a slight bonus to them: a properly defined error handling
mechanism that is very closely matched to what browsers do, ergo what
the WhatWG parsing spec aims for.

>And at the risk of sounding snarky, can you point me to a
>reference where is it codified that they are not (at least partially) in the
>business of standards? 

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tech.msn.com

Should give some indication.

(I had to cheat slightly with MSN, the sneaky boys made the home page on
msn.com validate to throw people off, but as I suspected the document at
the first link from msn.com I tried failed validation :-)

-- 
Spartanicus

(email whitelist in use, non list-server mail will not be seen)


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-21 Thread Mike Schinkel
Aankhen wrote:
> "I was gonna go to this site I found on Google, but then I 
> saw that it was corrupted, so I figured it musta been a 
> security issue or something."
> 
> As for "text/html", it's just another string of technical 
> jargon added by those crazy Google guys.  Wonder what it means?
> 
> Perhaps you feel I'm exaggerating; in that case, go and ask 
> any non-computer savvy friends or relatives what it means if 
> the HTML on a page is corrupted.

You guys are looking at the forests, not the trees. Don't nitpick the
details at this stage. It would be a PR campaign.  If they (Google, Yahoo,
MSN, et. al.) thought it were worth doing, they could damn well create a PR
campaign that would put the right spin on it.  Nice little happy logos for
complaint, poor little sad logos for non-compliant.  And they'd say it was a
public service aimed at making the web better, just like when the government
fixes potholes. The average user isn't so dumb that they can't understand
that some things are just for the benefit of the information super highway
even if they don't understand the details.

The only problem with what I just described is if there really is no value
in cleaning up websites that don't follow standards.  So that leaves just
one question...

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/








Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-21 Thread Mike Schinkel
Henri Sivonen wrote:
> Umm. The point is that you shouldn't show users something 
> that they don't understand or care about.

Depends on what your objective is.  Objectives are not always singular.

> Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a 
> standards- compliance agenda.

Who is?   And at the risk of sounding snarky, can you point me to a
reference where is it codified that they are not (at least partially) in the
business of standards? 

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
P.S. Ian works for Google and he sure seems pretty adamant about
standards...



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-21 Thread Mike Schinkel
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
> Conversely, Site authors and developers, however, would be 
> most unlikely to ignore such warnings from one of the big 
> three search engines, because they're incredibly 
> embarrassing. Which would mean that 90% figure would shrink 
> fast. It would become an SEO priority.

Thanks Benjamin. That was exactly what I was thinking when I made this
unorthodox proposal.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-20 Thread Mike Schinkel
> Humans don't work that way. If the words "HTML (WARNING)" or 
> "XHTML (WARNING)" started appearing next to over 90 percent 
> of search results, people would not think that something was 
> wrong with 90 percent of Web pages. They would think that 
> something was wrong with the search engine. And they would be right.

Then it could say "(X)HTML Validated!" or "(X)HTML NOT-Validated."

The point is to create a reason why web site owners will ever care. People
will do a cost-benefit analysis of ensuring their (X)HTML validates and,
without a downside they clearly see,  too many will choose not to.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Henri Sivonen wrote:

> Search engines should not list ill-formed application/xhtml+xml at  
> all, because a user following the link would see the YSoD.

Ah, but what about XHTML 1.0 served as text/html, which is in a weird
twilight zone where it is neither "HTML" nor quite the same as
"text/html (non-standard)"? (But then I suppose one could argue such
XHTML doesn't need to be well-formed either. Maybe just labelling all
such documents as "HTML compatible" would be better.)

> However, in cases of slightly broken text/html, the user could still find the 
>  
> page useful. The search engines are in the business of providing  
> results that users find useful, so search engines should list  
> slightly broken text/html documents.

I don't follow this. How can search engines distinguish between
"slightly broken text/html" and very broken text/html? How can search
engines prejudge how a given breakage will affect how the user wants to
use the page (as a blind user, as a microformats user, as a minority
browser user, etc.)?

> The point is that you shouldn't show users something that they  
> don't understand or care about.

What, like ads? ;)  Or, more seriously, like the information about the
sizes of pages offered by Google search? My guess (and I admit it's only
that) is that "39k" means nothing to an average user, even the ones on
dial-up who might care. Anyhow, this all prejudges what users care
about. If I'm an ordinary user, it's handy to know a page may not be
working because it's broken, not because of some flaw in my browser. And
a /lot/ of pages on the web don't work. Understanding might be a
problem, but that's true of most of the stuff on search engines. The
non-technical users I talk to can't understand the difference between
the address bar, the search bar, and the search input on their homepage.

> Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a standards- 
> compliance agenda. 

Nothing I said implied they were. The apparent absence of validity
warnings from Google's Accessible Search may be more surprising, but I
think the chance of any of them implementing such warnings in their main
search results is zero, regardless of the merits of the case either way.
(It would be /way/ too embarrassing since many, if not most, of those
companies' own webpages don't validate.) I just don't think the
particular argument against it put forward earlier in this thread (about
it scaring users away from Google search) stands up.

> On the contrary, they compete on how well they can  
> rank the relevance of search results even in the absence of the  
> supposedly seache-engine-helping semantic markup.

Generally true, though some important aspects of valid markup do help
search engines; e.g. the requirement of an ALT attribute for IMG
provides search engines with additional text data.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas

On Dec 19, 2006, at 9:54 AM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:


Aankhen wrote:


"I was gonna go to this site I found on Google, but then I saw that it
was corrupted, so I figured it musta been a security issue or
something."


The original problem I was contesting and attempting to solve was that
users would think, incorrectly, that such messages indicated a problem
with Google. You seem to think users would think, correctly, that there
is a problem with the linked page. That's what they should think,
because that's what the message means.
...


Alas, as amusing as this discussion is, it's not relevant to the WhatWG 
(and I apologize for participating). If you think search engine result 
pages would be better if festooned with useless warnings, lobby your 
favorite search engine vendor, or go start your own.


--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 12:28 -0800, Aankhen wrote:
> On 12/18/06, Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Maybe the other way round? "Valid [X]HTML" on valid documents?
> 
> That seems reasonable; if it were unobtrusive, most users would just
> ignore it, but it'd be there for anyone who wanted to know.

The problem with this is it doesn't provide as much of an incentive for
people to fix their markup as the fear (which you just expressed) that
users might be scared of their "corrupted" or "invalid" or "warning"
HTML does. (Actually I suspect many users would ignore both sets of
notices since they wouldn't know what they mean. It's the psychological
effect on authors that's really crucial.)

But it would still be better than nothing.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Aankhen wrote:
> "I was gonna go to this site I found on Google, but then I saw that it
> was corrupted, so I figured it musta been a security issue or
> something."

The original problem I was contesting and attempting to solve was that
users would think, incorrectly, that such messages indicated a problem
with Google. You seem to think users would think, correctly, that there
is a problem with the linked page. That's what they should think,
because that's what the message means.

> As for "text/html", it's just another string of technical jargon added
> by those crazy Google guys.  Wonder what it means?

Yeah, so do browsers. :)

In any case, it is the job of good design to explain requisite jargon. I
suggest "text/html" because such pages are not HTML, and there's no
point in mislabelling them. If you have a better term, I'm all ears.

> Perhaps you feel I'm exaggerating; in that case, go and ask any
> non–computer savvy friends or relatives what it means if the HTML on a
> page is corrupted.

Go ask them what it means if a Word document or hard disk is
"corrupted". It's the right word for the case; end-users don't need to
have a deep understanding of how web pages or Word documents or file
systems are part together.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Aankhen

On 12/18/06, Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Maybe the other way round? "Valid [X]HTML" on valid documents?


That seems reasonable; if it were unobtrusive, most users would just
ignore it, but it'd be there for anyone who wanted to know.
--
Aankhen
(We have no branches.)


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Aankhen

On 12/18/06, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I would however definitely suggest better messages, since "WARNING"
verges on being meaningless. Perhaps "HTML (corrupted)" and "XHTML
(corrupted)" for documents that cite (or imply) a standard document type
but clearly fail to conform to it, "text/html (non-standard variant)"
for text/html documents that do not cite (or imply) a standard document
type, and "XHTML (broken)" for non-well-formed XHTML.


"I was gonna go to this site I found on Google, but then I saw that it
was corrupted, so I figured it musta been a security issue or
something."

As for "text/html", it's just another string of technical jargon added
by those crazy Google guys.  Wonder what it means?

Perhaps you feel I'm exaggerating; in that case, go and ask any
non–computer savvy friends or relatives what it means if the HTML on a
page is corrupted.
--
Aankhen
(We have no branches)


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Henri Sivonen

On Dec 18, 2006, at 12:57, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:


"XHTML (broken)" for non-well-formed XHTML.


Search engines should not list ill-formed application/xhtml+xml at  
all, because a user following the link would see the YSoD. However,  
in cases of slightly broken text/html, the user could still find the  
page useful. The search engines are in the business of providing  
results that users find useful, so search engines should list  
slightly broken text/html documents.



I can imagine end-users ignoring such warnings because they don't
understand or care.


Umm. The point is that you shouldn't show users something that they  
don't understand or care about.



I think you underestimate the brand power of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Rightly or wrongly, end-users trust these guys. If Google says 90% of
the web is corrupted, but Google otherwise functions normally, then  
90%

of the web is corrupted.


Google, Yahoo and MSN aren't in the business of enforcing a standards- 
compliance agenda. On the contrary, they compete on how well they can  
rank the relevance of search results even in the absence of the  
supposedly seache-engine-helping semantic markup.


--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Alexey Feldgendler
On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:57:08 +0600, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

>> Humans don't work that way. If the words "HTML (WARNING)" or "XHTML
>> (WARNING)" started appearing next to over 90 percent of search results,
>> people would not think that something was wrong with 90 percent of Web
>> pages. They would think that something was wrong with the search
>> engine.

> I see no reason why that should be the case; and short of actual user
> tests with well-designed warnings I don't suppose we'll ever be sure.
>
> I would however definitely suggest better messages, since "WARNING"
> verges on being meaningless. Perhaps "HTML (corrupted)" and "XHTML
> (corrupted)" for documents that cite (or imply) a standard document type
> but clearly fail to conform to it, "text/html (non-standard variant)"
> for text/html documents that do not cite (or imply) a standard document
> type, and "XHTML (broken)" for non-well-formed XHTML.

Maybe the other way round? "Valid [X]HTML" on valid documents?


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 23:26 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> Humans don't work that way. If the words "HTML (WARNING)" or "XHTML 
> (WARNING)" started appearing next to over 90 percent of search results, 
> people would not think that something was wrong with 90 percent of Web 
> pages. They would think that something was wrong with the search 
> engine. 

I see no reason why that should be the case; and short of actual user
tests with well-designed warnings I don't suppose we'll ever be sure.

I would however definitely suggest better messages, since "WARNING"
verges on being meaningless. Perhaps "HTML (corrupted)" and "XHTML
(corrupted)" for documents that cite (or imply) a standard document type
but clearly fail to conform to it, "text/html (non-standard variant)"
for text/html documents that do not cite (or imply) a standard document
type, and "XHTML (broken)" for non-well-formed XHTML.

I can imagine end-users ignoring such warnings because they don't
understand or care. But a search engine isn't doing its job properly if
it fails to explain its own messages. That's the potential usability
flaw, not the inclusion of the messages themselves.

I think you underestimate the brand power of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Rightly or wrongly, end-users trust these guys. If Google says 90% of
the web is corrupted, but Google otherwise functions normally, then 90%
of the web is corrupted.

Conversely, Site authors and developers, however, would be most unlikely
to ignore such warnings from one of the big three search engines,
because they're incredibly embarrassing. Which would mean that 90%
figure would shrink fast. It would become an SEO priority.

> And they would be right.

How so? Search engines have long provided format information about
search results. This is little different. It would make even more sense
if the search engine offered to Tidy the corrupted content up (just as
Google offers to transform PDF and Word documents to HTML).

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-18 Thread Matthew Paul Thomas

On Dec 5, 2006, at 12:14 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:


... [proposal for search engines to denote pages that don't validate 
as "HTML (WARNING)" or "XHTML (WARNING)"]



I have huge doubts that this would pass even elementary
usability testing, because most users would just say "I
don't care".


But that's the thing; usability wouldn't matter; let users ignore it.


Humans don't work that way. If the words "HTML (WARNING)" or "XHTML 
(WARNING)" started appearing next to over 90 percent of search results, 
people would not think that something was wrong with 90 percent of Web 
pages. They would think that something was wrong with the search 
engine. And they would be right.


--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/



Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-11 Thread Mike Schinkel
> Yes, visible metadata is far more likely to be kept updated 
> than invisible metadata (a quick look at the Web is enough 
> to demonstrate that).

You are making assumptions based on what has been and not what can be. If
business processes require the data to be maintained in order to continue
making money (i.e. there is a direct causal link), it will be. Earlier I
gave you an example of such need for maintenace of data based on my previous
reseller business. That was serious real world example, and I describe
another spin on it below.

> > 14 characters times every instance. There can be hundreds 
> to thousands 
> > of instances on the page. It makes creating the markup 
> correctly very 
> > difficult, and adds needlessly to page size (often exceeding Google 
> > recommendations for parsable documents.)
> 
> Could you show me an example of such a page?

Certainly.  The following is some of the research I did when discussing
"currency" microformat on uf-discuss (I have more if you need it):

The list is of very large price lists from the web. Some are in PDF and/or
XLS formats, but I would argue one of the things Microformats will hopefully
encourage would be the publishing of these more things in HTML so they could
be processed by machines instead of XLS and PDF (except of course in the
latter case where the content is best in PDF format.)

As I have mentioned before, I ran an catalog/internet retailer that sold
software development tools to software developers for 12 years.  One of the
best things Microsoft could have done for us was to have published their
product and price lists in a well known location with documented
parsability.  Sure we could find them in their ever changing locations and
we could download the Excel files but we didn't have the skill to parse the
info out reliability so we never did it.  I can't tell you just how valuable
it would have been for us if they had just published in an HTML format with
something like Microformats. It would have saved us literally tens of
thousands of dollars over the years.

BTW, publishing it as lots of lists would have made it much harder for us to
get to it. One file would have been best.  And we'd have downloaded it
nightly.

https://partner.microsoft.com/download/US/40018463
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/2007/institution_price_list.ht
ml
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/2007/personal_price_list.html
http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Springer%2
0Journals%20Price%20List%202007%20EUR.xls?SGWID=0-0-45-310891-0
http://www.sagepublications.com/INSTPRICELIST.pdf
http://www.oceanoptics.com/Products/pricelist102006.pdf
http://www..org/cloister/pricelists/current-magic
http://support.dialog.com/pricing/dialogselect/dsel_prices.pdf
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/cservices/pricelist.pdf
http://www.wiley-vch.de/pdf/Wiley_Pricelist_2007.pdf
http://www.softwarespectrum.com/microsoft/Advisor/docs/EA_Perpetual_Listed_U
S_PriceList.xls
http://www.smalldog.com/SmallDogPriceList.txt

> > > What's wrong with:
> > >$54.97 (USD)
> > 
> > Uh, no metadata?
> 
> What metadata is missing? The currency and  
> amount are both present. What more do you 
> need?

This was discussed ad-nauseum on uf-discuss.  Ironically, I argued what you
argued, but was overruled. Here's one place where some of the discussions
where captured: http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-brainstorming

If you need more, see: http://microformats.org/wiki/currency-examples and
http://microformats.org/wiki/currency
Also, look for "currency" on
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/threa
d.html

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org/




Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-11 Thread Alexey Feldgendler
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:53:50 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> They will, and old browsers will show either fallback content, if
>> provided, or nothing at all in place of the . I don't see
>> how is this rendering "better" than showing an error message for
>> malformed  content.

> Based on my experience, nothing at all is better than an error message in
> so far as what users think. Nothing at all, they ignore. An error message,
> they say "why is the browser broken? My old browser wasn't broken. I'm
> going back to my old browser".

Case 1. The embedding is invalid.

Old browser: "Here is the sketch I drew yesterday:" (and no sketch).
New browser: "Here is the sketch I drew yesterday: ".

In this case, the page is equally broken in both browsers. The new browser is 
even more informative because it at least explains that there should have been 
an image, and probably the reasons why it can't be displayed.

Case 2. The embedding is valid.

Old browser: "Here is the sketch I drew yesterday:" (and no sketch).
New browser: "Here is the sketch I drew yesterday: ".

In this case, the rendering of the new browser is undoubtedly better.

To summarize: in either case, the rendering of the new browser is *not worse* 
than that of the old browser.

>> You won't be able to manipulate the SVG DOM in this case.

> Your use case didn't mention manipulating the DOM. Moving targets are hard
> to hit -- that's why we try to list the use cases before designing the
> solution.

The use case wasn't mine. :-)

>> These are actually two independent aspects:
>>  1. Native support vs. plugins.
>> 2. External resources vs. inline data.
>>  Native support + external resources --> e.g. JPEG http://...";>
>> Plugins + external resources --> e.g. Flash
>> Native support + inline data --> e.g. JPEG 
>> Plugins + inline data --> no examples yet, but why not?

> "Why not" is not a design process, sorry.

The "why not" is for implementations, not for the spec. Using native support or 
a plugin is completely up to the implementation. There can even be a third way: 
for example, add-on support for embedded MathML is avaliable as a UserJS for 
Opera -- this works somewhat like a plugin but is written in JS.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-11 Thread Ian Hickson
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:25:27 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> 
> >> 1.) Inserting Sam Ruby's SVG logo into HTML, for one example.
> >
> > The  element already supports images in HTML. You can even embed 
> > images directly in the page with data: URIs, regardless of the format 
> > (be it PNG, JPEG, or SVG, for example.)
> 
> You won't be able to manipulate the SVG DOM in this case.

Your use case didn't mention manipulating the DOM. Moving targets are hard 
to hit -- that's why we try to list the use cases before designing the 
solution.


> >>> We already have such a mechanism, namely, plugins.
> >> 
> >> Two extension mechanisms are not possible?
> > 
> > Redundancy is always possible. Whether it is desireable is the 
> > question.
> 
> These are actually two independent aspects:
> 
> 1. Native support vs. plugins.
> 2. External resources vs. inline data.
> 
> Native support + external resources --> e.g. JPEG http://...";>
> Plugins + external resources --> e.g. Flash
> Native support + inline data --> e.g. JPEG 
> Plugins + inline data --> no examples yet, but why not?

"Why not" is not a design process, sorry.

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-11 Thread Ian Hickson
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:27:14 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> ...in new browsers, then it looks worse in new browsers than old 
> >>> ones. Thus, new browsers will want to go back to the way that old 
> >>> browsers handled it, so that they don't handle it worse than the 
> >>> (old) competition.
> >>
> >> [...] if the  is completely new, such as the proposed 
> >> , then the only documents containing  would be 
> >> those that target the new browsers which support it.
> >
> > You assume that documents targetted at new browsers will not be seen 
> > in old browsers. This isn't the case (if it was, we wouldn't have 
> > people trying to send XHTML to HTML UAs).
> 
> No, I don't.

Ok. It sounded like you were.


> They will, and old browsers will show either fallback content, if 
> provided, or nothing at all in place of the . I don't see 
> how is this rendering "better" than showing an error message for 
> malformed  content.

Based on my experience, nothing at all is better than an error message in 
so far as what users think. Nothing at all, they ignore. An error message, 
they say "why is the browser broken? My old browser wasn't broken. I'm 
going back to my old browser".

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-10 Thread Alexey Feldgendler
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:25:27 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> 1.) Inserting Sam Ruby's SVG logo into HTML, for one example.

> The  element already supports images in HTML. You can even embed
> images directly in the page with data: URIs, regardless of the format (be
> it PNG, JPEG, or SVG, for example.)

You won't be able to manipulate the SVG DOM in this case. Also, data: URIs are 
inconvenient to write, and they are only usable for very short data strings.

>>> We already have such a mechanism, namely, plugins.

>> Two extension mechanisms are not possible?

> Redundancy is always possible. Whether it is desireable is the question.

These are actually two independent aspects:

1. Native support vs. plugins.
2. External resources vs. inline data.

Native support + external resources --> e.g. JPEG http://...";>
Plugins + external resources --> e.g. Flash
Native support + inline data --> e.g. JPEG 
Plugins + inline data --> no examples yet, but why not?

External resources vs. inline data are the ways that the spec defines things 
(e.g. data: URIs). Native support vs. plugins is what implementors decide, and 
it may vary from implementation to implementation (e.g. one browser displays 
PNG natively, another one does it through a plugin); this choice shouldn't 
affect how documents are written.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-10 Thread Alexey Feldgendler
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:27:14 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>>> ...in new browsers, then it looks worse in new browsers than old ones.
>>> Thus, new browsers will want to go back to the way that old browsers
>>> handled it, so that they don't handle it worse than the (old)
>>> competition.

>> I disagree with you here.
>>
>> [...] if the  is completely new, such as the proposed
>> , then the only documents containing  would be
>> those that target the new browsers which support it.

> You assume that documents targetted at new browsers will not be seen in
> old browsers. This isn't the case (if it was, we wouldn't have people trying
> to send XHTML to HTML UAs).

No, I don't. They will, and old browsers will show either fallback content, if 
provided, or nothing at all in place of the . I don't see how is 
this rendering "better" than showing an error message for malformed 
 content.

> You also assume that documents that contain the new feature will not be
> targetted at older UAs. This is also not the case (if it was, we wouldn't
> have things like , , etc).

Maybe they will. If so, they will provide fallback content.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com


Re: [whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

2006-12-09 Thread Thomas Broyer

2006/12/5, Michel Fortin:


It's interesting you mention . If we want some sort of XML
data island, we could use something like this: