Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On 01/01/07, Mike Schinkel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Interesting that you should choose that example, because it can mean different things depending on the element you use it on. Therefore, a global |type| attribute would almost certainly conflict with the element-specific attribute unless it was defined otherwise. Conflicts don't create any anxiety for me. If there is a conflict either there is an undefined state or one of the two is defined to take prescedence. Right. Do you volunteer for the job of going through all role values and all current HTML element semantics and define which one takes presedence in each possible conflict? Matthew's point is that this task itself is massive. Imagine: for each suggested role value, go through all HTML elements (since role is a global attribute) and note possible conflicts. Go through all other HTML attributes (and their values) and note possible conflicts. Now define the outcome of each conflict. Do it again, but now in C++ code. His secondary point is that if the spec doesn't do this, every browser will handle things differently so authors will not be able to use role as intended because of browser incompatibilities. I've shown you that not only are there conflicts with proposed attributes, roles and elements, but that they actually compete in certain situations. Furthermore, I did so with only minutes worth of research. I don't see that as a problem they way you do. That's the attitude that made HTML error recovery such a mess :-( you have an opinion that few if any others are rallying behind. Perhaps because it seems too obvious to discuss? You could go back to the list of markup samples, and tell us for each of them what you feel the actual semantic of that should be, and how it should be handled visually or in form submission. Once you've tried to understand the complexity involved we'll have more common ground for the discussion. -- Hallvord R. M. Steen
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Hallvord R M Steen wrote: you have an opinion that few if any others are rallying behind. Perhaps because it seems too obvious to discuss? It doesn't seem obvious to anyone over on the microformat list, AFAICT. If it is that critical, why are all those to whom it is obvious making the case on uf-discuss? You could go back to the list of markup samples, and tell us for each of them what you feel the actual semantic of that should be, and how it should be handled visually or in form submission. Once you've tried to understand the complexity involved we'll have more common ground for the discussion. Unfortunately, this aspect is not my highest priority. The unfortunate thing is I'll probably just have to knowingly generate invalid HTML in some cases because I know the browsers will handle it, as will so many others who are using semantic markup in HTML who bump into the limitations imposed by the specification writer. FWIW. -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Hallvord R M Steen wrote: Do you volunteer for the job of going through all role values and all current HTML element semantics and define which one takes presedence in each possible conflict? Matthew's point is that this task itself is massive. Since both roles and microformats are open extension mechanisms, it's a moving target and specifying rules of precedence would become harder and harder, and impose a greater and greater burden of testing on extension spec writers, as more and more roles and microformats are added. One way to manage this complexity would be to group roles and microformats into /types/ and set rules of precedence for those types. Which could be done, but I don't see anyone doing it. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: Interesting that you should choose that example, because it can mean different things depending on the element you use it on. Therefore, a global |type| attribute would almost certainly conflict with the element-specific attribute unless it was defined otherwise. Conflicts don't create any anxiety for me. If there is a conflict either there is an undefined state or one of the two is defined to take prescedence. One thing an element like |type| does provide, however, is mutual exclusion. However, you could do that with a namespace: Please forgive me if I am exhibiting my ignorance, but my understanding is that HTML5 will not have XML namespaces per se because HTML5 is not XML? Notice how the use of namespaced attributes instead of |role| actually requires fewer characters. In theory, if you used a lot of roles, the savings in equal signs and quotation marks might make |role| more attractive, but I doubt it would be significant to justify |role| itself. purpose is orthogonal to the purpose of the elements they're being added to. That's why |id| and |class| are so useful. They don't alter the semantics of the element. Rather, they act as targets for styling and scripting. However, global attributes like |role|, |src| and |href| directly compete with the semantics of HTML elements in many ways. We already see this with |role| versus HTML5. Many roles have semantics that overlap with elements like nav (navigation), article (secondary), aside (note) and footer (contentinfo). I still have not heard a compelling argument against an additional attribute. May I ask, but is your relationship to this spec? Do you need to implement it? On what platform? I've shown you that not only are there conflicts with proposed attributes, roles and elements, but that they actually compete in certain situations. Furthermore, I did so with only minutes worth of research. I don't see that as a problem they way you do. Is there an axiom or W3C finding that we can reference for this? Of course not. That's the problem. You see the power of markup being shifted from elements to attributes to attribute values. Then your beef should not be with me, but with the W3C (or similar). If they will publish a finding that says it's a bad thing, I might come to see it as such. Right now I don't. This line of conversation doesn't advance our conversation regarding global attributes and roles. Even if there is no support for my viewpoint in the W3C, the idea that this proves my argument invalid is a logical fallacy. It is NOT fallacy as the entire point of the W3C and IETF and others is to develop consensus between Good and Bad Things so we have some Authorities and don't have to debate our PERSONAL OPINIONS ad infinitum. If you think it is wrong, take it a group that will agree and publish a finding. Or create an advocacy initiative (like I have: www.welldesignedurls.org) and publish enough of your work in a compelling enough manner that people will agree to support your position. As it is, your position is just a judgement call that can only be determined with individual experience to which I currently disgree, but please don't call me out on my position in a public forum because you have an opinion that few if any others are rallying behind. Even better, why not go to [uf-discuss] and make your case there? If you can convince those guys it's not a good idea you'll be far more effective then trying to convince me here (where few others on *this* list seem to care.) I can debate each of your remaining points from your message, but it is hardly relevent because it won't change your mind or for that matter anyone else's on this list. At a high level you seem to feel that everything should be tightly controlled so there is no chance of invalid combinations and I believe at a high level things should be loosely controlled even if it means some invaldid markuo sp that useful patterns are allowed to emerge. You prefer control, I prefer freedom. If we were talking politics you'd be right-wing and I've be left. Since it is a fundamental disagreement in philosophy which doesn't necessarily make either of us more right or wrong than the other, neither of us can really claim the high ground. If you feel strongly about your position, take it to the W3C, uf-discuss, the IETF, or all of the above and make your case so that they publish a finding in support of your position. Until then, I don't think it's appropriate to continue discussing on WHATWG. If others on the list disagree and think we should continue the debate here, they should let us both. Until then, adieu. Respectfully, -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Mike Schinkel wrote: Matthew Raymond wrote: Mike Schinkel wrote: Why should attributes (only?) specify the details of semantics that elements already possess? Global attributes aren't necessarily wrong if their By global do you simply mean attributes for HTML elements, i.e. a type attribute for a DIV element, for example? Interesting that you should choose that example, because it can mean different things depending on the element you use it on. Therefore, a global |type| attribute would almost certainly conflict with the element-specific attribute unless it was defined otherwise. One thing an element like |type| does provide, however, is mutual exclusion. However, you could do that with a namespace: | xhtml:element ns1:type=value ns2:type=value / For |role|, you're required to use namespaces anyways, so I don't see how |role| brings anything to the table. It's just a means of creating minimized boolean attributes in XML. I'd much rather see XML modified to accommodate minimized attributes because I suspect the additional parsing of the attribute value would be just as burdensome. Now, remember this example? | input [..] role=wairole:textbox wairole:checkbox wairole:select Let's take out the conflicting roles and add a check state: | input role=wairole:checkbox aaa:state=checked It could be eliminated by using a mutually exclusive attribute: | input wai:widget=checkbox aaa:state=checked Notice how the use of namespaced attributes instead of |role| actually requires fewer characters. In theory, if you used a lot of roles, the savings in equal signs and quotation marks might make |role| more attractive, but I doubt it would be significant to justify |role| itself. Even then, though, you have to determine how the attributes interact with the element they're assigned to. Does |wai:widget| override the input element's |type| attribute? Or its |value|? How does this attribute integrate into the form submission model? How would I use this attribute with XHTML 2.0 and XForms? Every time you introduce a new namespace, you have an entire set of elements for which you have to define interactions with other namespaces. purpose is orthogonal to the purpose of the elements they're being added to. That's why |id| and |class| are so useful. They don't alter the semantics of the element. Rather, they act as targets for styling and scripting. However, global attributes like |role|, |src| and |href| directly compete with the semantics of HTML elements in many ways. We already see this with |role| versus HTML5. Many roles have semantics that overlap with elements like nav (navigation), article (secondary), aside (note) and footer (contentinfo). You reference altering the semantics as if that was A Bad Thing. I believe I am to understand that you believe it is A Bad Thing, but my current view is that it is not a bad thing and AFAICT you've not given any evidence that it is A Bad Thing. Now I'm not saying that I won't ultimately realize that it is A Bad Thing, but right now I just don't see it. I've shown you that not only are there conflicts with proposed attributes, roles and elements, but that they actually compete in certain situations. Furthermore, I did so with only minutes worth of research. Is there an axiom or W3C finding that we can reference for this? Of course not. That's the problem. You see the power of markup being shifted from elements to attributes to attribute values. I'm having to read between the lines here in order to understand your point. Are you saying that you see it as a big problem, but nobody else has seen it as a big problem, or at least not enough people to author an guidance against doing so? This line of conversation doesn't advance our conversation regarding global attributes and roles. Even if there is no support for my viewpoint in the W3C, the idea that this proves my argument invalid is a logical fallacy. The |role| attribute itself is equivalent to having an infinite number of boolean attributes. I still need to see why this is bad. Because markup structure has semantic significance. If you shift all the semantic meaning to global attributes, you loose the ability to use structure for semantic purposes. input contenteditable readonly input type=hidden role=banner output role=search body role=seealso body role=secondary div role=main secondary div role=main note input type=checkbox role=wairole:textbox input type=file role=wairole:checkboxtristate input type=hidden href=http://whatwg.org; input type=hidden src=http://whatwg.org/images/logo; script [...] href=http://whatwg.org; / input [...] role=wairole:textbox wairole:checkbox wairole:select hr role=main [Snip!] From a quick scan of your examples, it seems you have provided numerous examples where each one is a case of conflicting and/or mutually exclusive attributes semantics, attribute vs. element semantics, or
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On Dec 22, 2006, at 3:23 AM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: Henri Sivonen wrote: ... Also, it seems to me that the usefulness of non-heuristic machine consumption of semantic roles of things like dialogs, names of vessels, biological taxonomical names, quotations, etc. has been vastly exaggerated. I'm not entirely sure what non-heuristic machine consumption is, An example of non-heuristic machine consumption is where Google Glossary thinks: In an HTML 3.2 or earlier document containing the code 'dldtfoodt ddbar/dd/dl', 'bar' is a definition of 'foo'. (It probably thinks the same about HTML 4 documents, too, which is applying a small ignore that nonsense about dialogues heuristic.) An example of heuristic machine consumption is where Google Glossary thinks: In an HTML document containing the code 'pbfoo:/b bar/p', 'bar' is probably a definition of 'foo', especially if the page has several consecutive paragraphs with that structure and different bold text. Non-heuristic machine consumption fails when semantic elements are abused, and becomes practical when elements have multiple popular meanings (examples of the latter include dl in HTML 4, and p in HTML 5). Heuristic machine consumption fails occasionally by the very nature of heuristics (examples currently include http://www.google.com/search?q=define:author and http://www.google.com/search?q=define:editor.) -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On Dec 26, 2006, at 1:50 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: ... Non-heuristic machine consumption fails when semantic elements are abused, and becomes practical when elements have multiple popular meanings (examples of the latter include dl in HTML 4, and p in HTML 5). That should have been becomes IMpractical when elements have multiple popular meanings. Sorry for any confusion. -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: Leons Petrazickis wrote: I think what's wanted is a Cascading Semantics Language. I'm baffled. Why do we want this? What would it allow us to do? There are people who posted ideas about semantic properties for CSS on the www-style mailing list. They would likely be ecstatic about turning CSS into a cascading semantics language. Personally, this would be a greater nightmare than the |role| attribute. However, global attributes like |role| aren't much better. Attributes should specify the details of semantics that elements already possess. For example, |type| on an input element specifies the type of input. One of the example of the |role| attribute shows how you can provide values like checkbox to elements like span. I can understand assigning values such as these to DHTML container elements for accessibility purposes (and that might be a legitimate reason to create something like a global accessrole attribute or something similar), but |role| does not define any such limitations. Generally, though, this is just math. For every attribute or role you have that can apply to ALL elements, you have the semantics of all those elements to interact with, plus you have interactions between an indefinite number of global attributes that may be defined on that element. Without some sort of scope limitation, you can't possible define how the semantics of everything interacts. Think about the conversation regarding how simple nested elements in HTML interact with their parents and increase the complexity by several orders of magnitude.
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On Dec 21, 2006, at 05:21, Karl Dubost wrote: Le 21 déc. 2006 à 00:23, Henri Sivonen a écrit : Actually, structure is communicated to people using presentation. Presentation isn't just about attractiveness. Lao Niu puts his two fingers in the eyes of Henri in a Full contact move. Henri is blind. Henri is trying to kick the legs, and Lao Niu is putting two sharp sticks in Henri's ears. Henri is desperate trying to read the old master tales. That was uncalled for. The point is that there are limited ways of communicating data to humans. Content needs to be *presented* on visual, aural or tactile media in practice. Olfactory and gustative media would have hopelessly bad data transfer rates, so it isn't practical to design for them. For human consumers of content, practical device and media independence is achieved when there are reasonable presentations for realistically applicable media. Moreover, it is just natural that authors want to *optimize* for the visual media first with aural and tactile media coming as second and a distant third. Also, it seems to me that the usefulness of non-heuristic machine consumption of semantic roles of things like dialogs, names of vessels, biological taxonomical names, quotations, etc. has been vastly exaggerated. Therefore, I think the non-presentationalism principle shouldn't be taken too dogmatically. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
I'm not always the most tactful or sensitive person. If my choice of words in my original message offended you, I apologize. My passion for a subject occasionally makes me blind to how others might interpret my message. However, that does not excuse your behavior. You talk about how showing respect, but you're not willing to show it yourself. You avoid debating the subject of my original message, while replying _only_ to a perceived slight. You do not encourage an atmosphere of respect, so stop pretending to be its champion. If you really want to debate the original topic, I'll be waiting. I'd be pleasantly surprised if this actually turned into a discussion about semantic styling languages, but I'm not holding my breath.
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: Matthew Raymond wrote: semantic styling language Sorry to interrupt, but I don't understand what this phrase means. How would you define a semantic styling language differently from a semantic markup language, a presentational markup language, and a markup language for semantics and presentation? A presentational markup language would be like SVG or X3D. They use markup to create a presentation that may or may not be meaningful. HTML is a semantic markup language. It generally doesn't define how to present an element. Instead, it defines the what that element is supposed to mean in an abstract sense. A semantic styling language would be a language to assign semantics to elements in a manner similar to how CSS controls their presentations. One could change attributes like |href| and |rule| into style sheet properties and they'd still work in the exact same way, except that you would be able to use selectors rather than placing them on each element individually. This is what I meant by my insensitive half-a**ed comment. If you're going to do semantic assignment in a global fashion, wouldn't you rather select entire categories of elements and assign a set of semantic properties to them all at once? As powerful as this is, though, I strongly oppose it for two reasons: 1) HTML elements themselves would no longer have any meaning. They would just be targets for semantic property assignment. Think about what happens to the a element if |href| allows every element to be a hyperlink. 2) Semantics can interact in ways presentation never could. For instance, what happens when you put |href| on an input element? What does h1 role=note mean? When attributes (or properties) are global, every element has to define who it interacts with that property. The number of interactions grows exponentially. (This is also a problem with microformats that don't specify what elements certain classes, et cetera, can be used on.) Markup for semantics AND presentation? That would be the b and i elements. ;)
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: A semantic styling language would be a language to assign semantics to elements in a manner similar to how CSS controls their presentations. One could change attributes like |href| and |rule| into style sheet properties and they'd still work in the exact same way, except that you would be able to use selectors rather than placing them on each element individually. To be honest, I still don't understand this explanation. Is this a roundabout way of defining a semantic styling language as an (X)HTML that uses (X)HTML attributes as well as elements to express meaning? (Which is of course true of HTML 4 already, and even more true of the proposed XHTML 2.) HTML elements themselves would no longer have any meaning. They would just be targets for semantic property assignment. Think about what happens to the a element if |href| allows every element to be a hyperlink. I don't see how that matters at all. It seems to me that what's crucial is that if authors are going to /rely/ on any semantic elements or attributes, that user-agents should be guaranteed to express those semantics to users in a usable fashion. This is my central worry about microformats, especially when people starting trying to hide data within attributes rather than exposing it as text content, and it is also my central worry about XHTML2's role module. Semantics can interact in ways presentation never could. For instance, what happens when you put |href| on an input element? No idea. What happens with a href=http://www.example.com;input name=foobar/a ? What does h1 role=note mean? No idea. What would noteh1Foobar/h1/note mean? This is also a problem with microformats that don't specify what elements certain classes, et cetera, can be used on. Now /that/ is a real problem, but it is little different in type to specifying what elements contain, or can contain, what other elements. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Le 20 déc. 2006 à 6:57, Matthew Raymond a écrit : A presentational markup language would be like SVG or X3D. They use markup to create a presentation that may or may not be meaningful. Huh, what is a meaningful presentation exactly? To me, what is meaningful content is *not* presentational. The presentation is the way you arrange and surround your content to make it attractive (or not). Your definition of SVG as presentational precludes it from being meaningful, although you specifically say it can be meaningful too so I'm a little confused. SVG is simply an image description markup language, just like HTML is a document description markup language. SVG being presentational depends on how it is used. SVG may be suitable for visual media mostly, that doesn't automatically make it presentational. And just like HTML, you can, to a degree, separate the meaningful parts from the presentational parts in an SVG image: if a color was chosen for presentational reasons, set it using CSS; if the chosen font for a block of text is not meaningful to the document, set it with CSS or just inherit it from the HTML document if you have inline SVG. Michel Fortin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michelf.com/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: A semantic styling language would be a language to assign semantics to elements in a manner similar to how CSS controls their presentations. FWIW, it seems that a better term for the concept you describe would be semantic binding language, since presentation isn't actually involved anywhere. In the same vein CSS would be a presentation binding language and XBL roughly a behavior binding language. Having said that, I'm not sure I follow the point that you are trying to make. -- Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On Dec 20, 2006, at 16:18, Michel Fortin wrote: Huh, what is a meaningful presentation exactly? To me, what is meaningful content is *not* presentational. The presentation is the way you arrange and surround your content to make it attractive (or not). Actually, structure is communicated to people using presentation. Presentation isn't just about attractiveness. I think eschewing presentational features as a matter of principle misses the point. The goal behind the principle is independence of one client device or presentation media. A presentational feature can be sufficiently independent of particular devices and media if it has a reasonable presentations on all realistically relevant media. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
On 12/20/06, James Graham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Matthew Raymond wrote:
A semantic styling language would be a language to assign semantics
to elements in a manner similar to how CSS controls their presentations.
FWIW, it seems that a better term for the concept you describe would be
semantic binding language, since presentation isn't actually involved
anywhere. In the same vein CSS would be a presentation binding language and
XBL roughly a behavior binding language. Having said that, I'm not sure I
follow the point that you are trying to make.
I think what's wanted is a Cascading Semantics Language. Its syntax
could be based on CSS. For example:
.masthead {
type:heading;
strength:high;
}
.division {
type:heading;
strength: normal;
}
.flow {
type:body;
strength:normal;
}
.aside {
strength:weaker;
}
Behaviours, script bindings, etc could be mixed into this.
Regards,
--
Leons Petrazickis
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Henri Sivonen wrote: I think eschewing presentational features as a matter of principle misses the point. The goal behind the principle is independence of one client device or presentation media. A presentational feature can be sufficiently independent of particular devices and media if it has a reasonable presentations on all realistically relevant media. But IMHO independence of one client device or presentation media is not /the/ goal of eschewing presentational markup, but rather only one such goal. It's trivial for a screen reader to report presentational information such as i/. Disambiguation and ease of restyling are just as important. The same presentation can mean multiple things. Semantic markup disambiguates between cite/, em/, dfn/, and so on. This helps with machine processing and human understanding. And if you want to change italic citations to bold citations, then you don't have to distinguish the citations from the non-citations by hand. You just put a different rule into your stylesheet. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Leons Petrazickis wrote: I think what's wanted is a Cascading Semantics Language. I'm baffled. Why do we want this? What would it allow us to do? -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Le 20 déc. 2006 à 10:23, Henri Sivonen a écrit : Actually, structure is communicated to people using presentation. Presentation isn't just about attractiveness. Point taken. It's about making the document understandable, readable, *and* attractive. I think eschewing presentational features as a matter of principle misses the point. I totally agree. HTML should be describing documents in a useful manner. Minimizing presentational features is a good idea as long as it does not reduce the capabilities of the language to correctly describe the content in a usable manner. Michel Fortin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michelf.com/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: I'm not always the most tactful or sensitive person. If my choice of words in my original message offended you, I apologize. My passion for a subject occasionally makes me blind to how others might interpret my message. Apology accepted. If you really want to debate the original topic, I'll be waiting. I'd be pleasantly surprised if this actually turned into a discussion about semantic styling languages... Can you please explain exactly what you mean about semantic styling languages? Do you mean the same as what Tantek refers to as semantic (X)HTML? [1] I think of styling as relating to fonts, colors, positioning, etc. I decided to google for your various comments to try to get an understanding of what you were talking about in past discussions and I was sure that you had to have expressed this issue in the past. I found this link [2]. From it I quote: The problem is that, for all the creative ways you can use hCalendar/hCard, it's more complicated for webmasters to read and understand and more complicated for developers to implement. Furthermore, I dislike the entire system of using class names as markup. Class names should be reserved for user-defined semantics. Is this the same issue? -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/ [1] http://tantek.com/presentations/20040928sdforumws/semantic-xhtml.html [2] http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-February/00 3116.html P.S. Based on some of your comments from [2] you might find that I am in more agreement with you than you first assumed (or maybe not, I won't know until I better understand your issues.)
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Le 21 déc. 2006 à 00:23, Henri Sivonen a écrit : Actually, structure is communicated to people using presentation. Presentation isn't just about attractiveness. Lao Niu puts his two fingers in the eyes of Henri in a Full contact move. Henri is blind. Henri is trying to kick the legs, and Lao Niu is putting two sharp sticks in Henri's ears. Henri is desperate trying to read the old master tales. The presentation is useful for understanding the structure in *certain contexts*. It's all about context (graphics, ability, cultural, etc.). -- Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/ W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/ *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***
[whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Mike Schinkel wrote: Bruce D'Arcus wrote: In a world in which one CAN consider adding alternative attributes (HTML 5, etc.), it makes no sense to me one would simply say no. [I'm cross posting to uf-discuss and whatwg because Bruce's comment was made on uf-discuss but I've made the same point on WHATWG.] Bruce, I agree with you completely. But Ian Hickson has said that AFAHK that there was no cry for additional attributes on the uf-discuss list, And Ian also said he saw no need for them after I requested to get several attributes added to the list of attributes applicable to all elements, i.e. abbr, href, name, rel, rev, scope, size, src, type, and value. I hadn't had the chance to ask the uf-discuss list about this, so now is a perfect time. What about adding additional standard attributes to all elements. Would it be helpful? No, because you don't understand what you're really developing. This push for more global attributes in combination with the XHTML |rule| attribute are an unconscious attempt to create a primitive semantic styling language. It's a really complicated way of saying this: | element semanticstyle=this-semantic: A; that-semantic: B;/ Think about it: | div semstyle=href: url(http://whatwg.org); rev-abbr: 'WHATWG'; | Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group | /div I'm not going to pretend I think this is a good idea, but you must realize that the less you acknowledge that you're creating a semantic styling mechanism, the worse your implementation of that mechanism will be. I may not like the idea of semantics styling languages, but what I like less is a series of half-a**ed unconscious attempts to create semantics styling integrated into HTML.
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: I may not like the idea of semantics styling languages, but what I like less is a series of half-a**ed unconscious attempts to create semantics styling integrated into HTML. I may not like that you disagreed with me, but what I far less is for someone to talk down to me in a public forum based on their *assumption* that they know what *I* am thinking. A more respectful approach would have been far more productive. -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Mike Schinkel wrote: I may not like that you disagreed with me, but what I far less is for someone to talk down to me in a public forum based on their *assumption* that they know what *I* am thinking. I think it's clear from the context of my previous message that I was neither referring specifically to you, nor did I make any claim to know your thoughts. My claim was that you and others were pushing new features that collectively amounted to a semantic styling language without realizing it. If anything, that's believing I know what group of people are _not_ thinking. A more respectful approach would have been far more productive. There's nothing respectful about the tone of your reply. If you wanted to constructively criticize my previous message, you could have simply emailed me directly. What you're really trying to do is publicly shame me, and that's not something you do to someone you respect.
Re: [whatwg] Semantic styling languages in the guise of HTML attributes.
Matthew Raymond wrote: I think it's clear from the context of my previous message that I was neither referring specifically to you, nor did I make any claim to know your thoughts. Based on the language you chose, that wasn't clear to me at all. Let me quote: Matthew Raymond wrote: No, because you don't understand what you're really developing. ... I may not like the idea of semantics styling languages, but what I like less is a series of half-a**ed unconscious attempts to create semantics styling integrated into HTML. Maybe your is a use of language is different from that which I am not familiar, but as I read it, you referred to me. You can refer to the collective, but your context didn't support that intrepretation. And the you wouldn't have been bad had you not included the half-a**ed unconscious attempts as part of your closing statement. As such, even if you did mean you, collectively, I still find it disrespectful. Matthew Raymond wrote: There's nothing respectful about the tone of your reply. I didn't intend for it to be; I was responding as I was responded to. However, out of respect for everyone else on WHATWG this will be my last comment on the list regarding the above issue. If you want to debate the merits and non-merits of adding semantics to HTML, or semantic styling languages as you call it, I'll be more than happy to in a mutually respectful context. -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/
