On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Dimitri Glazkov <dglaz...@chromium.org> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 6:17 AM, Marcos Caceres <w...@marcosc.com> wrote: >> Hi Kornel, >> Although I have complete empathy about your criticisms regarding JSON, it is >> actually quite fit for this purpose. Using HTML in the way you describe is >> kinda problematic, in that it could include scripts and other resources: >> basically, one would need to build a DOM to parse out the information - and >> even if scripts where not run, or resources loaded, one would still then >> need to make a special HTML just for this purpose (which would confuse >> people, as if you use HTML you expect to be able to have access to features >> of the platform). We are going to need a custom processor for the JSON >> format, but at least parsing is already done for us (as it was with XML, >> though sadly it seems that devs prefer JSON). > > FWIW, I tend to think that Kornel is hitting on something here. > Whether we want it or not, HTML is the Web's serialization format. > It's the one that helps us understand where hyperlinks are and how > resources are interconnected. Having a manifest in that format sounds > like a Good Thing.
HTML is the Web's serialization format *for HTML, and other text-like things*. As Kornel's example shows, HTML is *not* well suited to holding key/value pairs or the like; you have to hack them in via ugly <meta> values, and you don't get any of the benefit of the rest of HTML, because <meta>/<link> *is all you're doing*. This is quite different from Templates, because those are actually leveraging HTML, and so using HTML as the delivery format as well just reduces impedance mismatch. I don't think that applies here. JSON is the way the web does key/value transmission. ~TJ
