Lachlan Hunt wrote:
...
productive, so I have taken this discussion off public-html, and I wish
people would quit trying to find loopholes in the ambiguous language of
the charter to support their own agenda. However, in defence of the
comment I made on IRC, let me explain.
...
Larry wasn't looking for loopholes, and I don't think he's supporting
any specific agenda. He just stated that the charter doesn't say what
some people claim it says (btw that included myself at some point of time).
It is twisting it because, despite claims to the contrary, the statement
is saying the following:
"The HTML WG is encouraged to provide a mechanism to permit
independently developed vocabularies ..."
This means we are encouraged (not required) to support some
independently developed vocabularies in some way.
Encouraged, not required: yes.
But it's about the *mechanism*, not about adding specific ones directly.
"... such as Internationalization Tag Set (ITS), Ruby, and RDFa to be
mixed into HTML documents"
Some examples of such independent vocabularies include RDFa, ITS and
Ruby. Note in particular that these are examples, and not an exclusive
list of the only ones we may choose to support.
I don't think anybody claimed that.
"Whether this occurs through the extensibility mechanism of XML,
whether it is also allowed in the classic HTML serialization [...]
is for the HTML WG to determine."
The choice of whether to support it in either or both XML and HTML
serialisations is left up to the HTML WG.
Yes. Did anybody claim something else?
"Whether this occurs through [various options] is for the HTML WG
to determine."
The mechanisms used to support them, if so desired, is also left up to
the HTML WG. Some possible mechanisms that may be considered are:
- Extensibility mechanism of XML (i.e. namespaces).
- Native support in the HTML serialisation.
(This is how we added support for Ruby)
- DTD and Schema modularization techniques.
Yes.
Despite many claims to the contrary in the past, it doesn't say that we
must support any particular independent vocabulary; nor that we can't
support other vocabularies that weren't listed as examples; nor that we
can't develop a new mechanism like Microdata to support other
independent vocabularies.
No, and nobody claims that.
Let's get back to what the charter says:
"The HTML WG is encouraged to provide a mechanism to permit
independently developed vocabularies such as Internationalization Tag
Set (ITS), Ruby, and RDFa to be mixed into HTML documents. Whether this
occurs through the extensibility mechanism of XML, whether it is also
allowed in the classic HTML serialization, and whether it uses the DTD
and Schema modularization techniques, is for the HTML WG to determine."
So this is about an extension *mechanism*, not a specific extension.
The XML serialization already has such an extension mechanism, through
XML namespaces. The HTML serialization does not.
Neither RDFa, nor Microdata are extension mechanisms that allow adding
"independently developed vocabularies" to HTML. They operate on a
different level. Of course one can argue that this is a good thing and
sufficient, but I don't think this is what the charter says.
And trying to twist the language of the charter, as Larry did, to
suggest that we are only permitted to develop one mechanism that works
for all of the independent vocabularies is counter productive as it only
serves to limit the choices available to the group, which is clearly the
opposite meaning intended by the parts granting the group such freedom
of choice.
I'd be happy if we had plans/ideas for multiple of these mechanisms for
text/html. So far we have none (unless you count the general statement
about extensions being possible as a concrete mechanism).
BR, Julian
