Pentasis schrieb:
The HTML5 spec is open to feedback from linguists, typographers and
content creators. I would agree we should particularly give
consideration to people with those backgrounds with regards to issues
of semantics. On the other hand, there is not total freedom here
because some choices will result in conflict with Web compatibility
or with practical implementation concerns.
Do you have any specific concerns about the current spec? That would
be more useful than criticizing the design process in the abstract.
I would be more than willing to do so, but only if these ideas are taken
seriously and we can have a civil, open dicussion about it without going
into defensive mode or side-arguments.
First of all, I want to make it absolutely clear that these ideas are
strictly dealing with context and semantics. I do not wish to interfere
in the technical part of the spec. I do understand that sometimes there
are ideas that may involve technical solutions. My first and foremost
concern is about having a specification that deals with the naming of
elements and their usage in such a way that this would give us a
standard which will enable us to markup content consistantly and
flexibally without ambiguity, and which is flexible enough to act
on-the-fly (so we don't have to wait for the next version of the spec if
something is missing).
also, please keep in mind I am not a native english speaker. I sometimes
have difficulty explaining exactly what I mean. If something is unclear,
just say so.
Finally, the ideas portrait below are just that. Ideas. I don't feel
strongly about the actual ideas themself, but I do feel strongly about
the mechanism they represent.
[ideas snipped]
If I understand you correctly, you suggest a very basic set of
structural elements, which are to be flexibally qualified by the authors
via the class attribute. The composition of that set should follow some
kind of basic language logic.
If I understand HTML correctly, it provides a limited set of
pre-qualified elements, some of them with a more structural emphasis,
some of them with a more semantic (or or even presentational) one. The
composition of that set does not follow a higher logic, but the everyday
needs of the common web author (or what the writers of the spec assume
this is).
(I hope this is understandable; I am not a native English speaker, either.)
So, supposed I got these both correctly, you do not really talk about
HTML, but about an alternative approach of marking up text documents. I
personnally find thinking about alternative approaches very interesting
and useful for opening up one's mind.
I agree with you that there are many things in HTML that have a purely
historic legitimation, such as the h1-h6 elements. <h level="n"> would
be much more flexible. I personnally often get mad about the IMO totally
unlogic set of form elements. I would highly appreciate such thigs to be
cleaned up in a new HTML spec. But of course the task ot those who
design HTML5 is not to re-invent the wheel, but to evolve the existing
HTML in a highly backwards-compatible way.
I made the experience when I suggested a new set of form elements, that
I did not get much response on those contributions. The same might
happen to your suggestions, as they are on a more basic level, than the
HTML5 works act on. I don't think you can blame the people working on
HTML5 for this, as they are quite far in the process, and your
suggestions do rather set new starting points, than contribute to the
acutal state of the work.
