I guess the miscommunication here is: what tooling will you build that needs to use something other than HTML to display the license?
What use-case do you have in mind, Dan? Greg <quote name="Dan Mills" date="2013-04-18" time="10:50:26 -0700"> > Hi, > > The licenses still contain too much information which is not actually part of > the licenses. Just open that link, view source, and behold. > > Of course we could parse it, but how would you decide what you can remove and > what is part of the license? We need to minimize the amount of code that has > such decisions embedded in it. > > Dan > > > On Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Nathan Kinkade wrote: > > > All of the CC licenses validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. There are > > a lot of really great XML parsers out there for manipulating such > > documents. It would be trivial for us to clean up the HTML in the 4.0 > > licenses to more minimal, using better nesting of id and classes so we > > can use more accurate CSS selectors, and javascript can more reliably > > navigate the DOM. I have already started this when I put together the > > Draft 3 of the 4.0 licenses by giving a unique ID to each section and > > subsection: > > > > http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/drafts/by-sa_4.0d3.html#s3a1B > > > > Nathan > > > > On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Dan Mills <[email protected] > > (mailto:[email protected])> wrote: > > > Hi Bjorn & Maarten, > > > > > > I think you're missing a key point that Kat is making: the legal team is > > > looking to change the pages that the licenses are on, to add translation > > > links. I also know that they are thinking about ways of including the > > > licenses inside the deeds, which would also require some changes to the > > > license pages. > > > > > > So the point is not "what do you think of Markdown" in a vacuum, it's: > > > what > > > format can we store that contains only the absolute minimum to be > > > considered to be part of the licenses, so that we can build tooling to > > > style > > > it appropriately depending on the context. > > > > > > We could obviously write tooling that takes the current HTML and > > > transforms > > > it, but such tooling would need to be highly content-aware: it would need > > > to > > > know which parts of the HTML file it can remove or change, and which ones > > > it > > > cannot. We likely can't eliminate that completely regardless of the > > > format, > > > but we should try to minimize it. > > > > > > Markdown seems pretty close to the minimal format that lets us express > > > what > > > we need. We could also continue to use HTML, but we'd need to use a > > > minimal > > > subset--not what we use now (which includes images, scripts, links not > > > part > > > of the license, etc). > > > > > > So, looking at your (Maarten's) four points with this in mind: > > > > > > 1. Both markdown and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) are markup > > > languages, it seems silly to convert one markup language into another. > > > > > > > > > This is not a criteria for choosing a format to use. > > > > > > > > > 2. Adding markdown to the infrastructure creates extra dependancies on > > > a conversion between markdown and HTML, one that will probably takes > > > more skill and time than doing these licenses immediately in html > > > > > > > > > It does, but the alternative is an HTML->HTML transformation, which is > > > arguably more complex because HTML is so expressive. We could make it work > > > if we enforced a very limited subset of HTML as the input, though. > > > > > > > > > 3. Markdown is not a standard and we cannot rely on it to stay the > > > same, HTML is. > > > > > > > > > This is not actually true, the history of HTML is littered with examples: > > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%28Non-standard_HTML%29#Deprecated_HTML_elements > > > > > > But you're right that Markdown is not currently led by any large standards > > > body. I think there are two mitigating factors: > > > > > > (a) The primary uses for these files will be: > > > > > > - to be transformed for general consumption, and > > > - to serve as an archive. > > > > > > The first is internal to CC only, the second requires at most that the > > > file > > > be readable at some point in the future without our help. In other words, > > > we > > > do not need every client (browser) to natively understand the format. > > > > > > (b) Markdown is so incredibly simple, it's hard to imagine a future where > > > someone will be unable to read it: > > > > > > http://etherpad.creativecommons.org/p/markdown-example > > > > > > 4. Markdown basically is short hand for HTML, again why would we use it? > > > > > > > > > Simplicity, and as a forcing function to get us to stop putting in > > > extraneous content in our licenses. > > > > > > Dan > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > cc-devel mailing list > > > [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) > > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > cc-devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel -- | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | http://grossmeier.net A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | _______________________________________________ cc-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel
