On Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:35:22 +0100, Paul Kinlan <paulkin...@google.com>
wrote:
We didn't want to add additional attributes to the meta tag or link
tag just for intents, this seems to open up the flood gates for future
platform features to also extend the meta syntax, the meta element
then just becomes a dumping ground. If the answer when defining a new
declarative standardized platform feature is to just arbitrarily add
new attributes to the meta data element we will get to a point where
either we have attributes that are used in multiple contexts or use
of basic attribute name spacing such as "intent-".
The answer is that when you want to add something new to the <head>
element, it makes sense to consider using <meta> and <link>, and that
adding attributes to them is not a big deal, because it rarely happens
that we do so. In the close to eight years the WHATWG has been working on
HTML, we have added one new attribute, to <link>.
Your argument is similar to why some people think HTML should have
namespaces. And it does not make much sense. I mean, we could have a
million elements in theory and we might need to disambiguate them if we
do, but in practice HTML aims to address the common use cases and can
therefore do with a relatively concise vocabulary. That also allows it to
be widely implemented by many user agents in the same way.
Looking at the spec[1] it appears there would still be a relatively
large change to the html5 spec to accomodate these new attributes and
conditional parsing guidelines.
There will be a relatively large change (larger, as it more complex) if we
add a new element too.
A new tag is simple, concise and encapsulates the features and
requirements of the new platform feature and gives us scope to iterate
for future versions without stepping on the toes of the other features
that might use the meta tag.
You do not create a conflict by adding new attributes. That makes no sense.
[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-meta-elemen
--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/
