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Andrew Watt writes:
> Really??
>
> Can you expound on why you believe XHTML 2.0 to be a "bright light"?
>
> For example ... For whom? To achieve what?
I can't speak for Jelks, but I'm happy to report that I consider XHTML
to be a rare W3C spec where:
1) The needs of human writer/editors and computer processors are both
considered important, with well-formedness the only major tilt toward
the computer in years - one with clear benefits for the humans in
toolkit access (XSLT, etc.) Keeping namespaces to an absolute minimum
is part of that. (And no, I don't blame the WG for the
three-namespaces-in-XHTML stupidity that eventually disappeared.)
2) The working group has restrained itself from piling on thousands of
so-called features and then telling users they can just ignore the ones
they don't want to use since the interactions couldn't possibly be
important.
3) The working group has stuck to a familiar idiom over the last few
years, fixing primarily broken parts (forms, frames) on an as-needed
basis.
4) While they can certainly work with other W3C specs, they've stuck
primarily to a core group that users loudly want - and whose working
groups took the importance of interaction with XHTML seriously.
5) While I think modularization was an utter waste of time, it doesn't
affect users working on documents. (2.0 finally provides more
substantive features to sell users, so I think that will be less of a
problem moving forward.)
While I'm thoroughly annoyed with the shroud of silence over W3C
process, I can't complain about the work the XHTML WG has done as far as
keeping it focused on Web developers. HTML and XHTML along with CSS
seem to be the only parts of W3C activity that still reach most "Web
developers" per se, though SVG and XSLT are on the radar. I have to
give them a lot of credit for doing that even while the rest of the W3C
appears to have wandered off into other work.
Is this a bright and shining star? I think so. From my outside
perspective, the only stars near as bright were the XML Working Group
before the W3C decided that XML was important, and possibly the XSLT 1.0
work...
I worry about RDF (and URIs generally) poisoning XML, and I worry about
an RDF/URI/Schema-poisoned XML poisoning XHTML. So far, I think XHTML
has chosen carefully and avoided the really toxic bits.
-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
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