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> I have no idea whether the benefits that XHTML 2.0 brings will outweigh
> the costs to the community of having "yet another standard". I've been
> scanning the messages on this thread, and haven't yet seen anyone claim
> that they will (perhaps I missed it).
For what it's worth, I see the benefit of XHTML 2 as precisely that it
*is* yet another standard. The result of shunning
"yet another standard" IMHO will be that some non-standard
"son of Flash" or "son of Blackbird" will predominate once HTML
is too old and tired to be worth the trouble.
XHTML 2.x seems like a declaration that there is an immense
amount of value to be preserved in the HTML legacy, but there is also
some refactoring to be done, and it's best to do this in relatively quiet
times. The old saw about "you have to break some eggs to make an omlette"
comes to mind.
I have no particular opinion on the specific "eggs" that the HTML WG
has broken in the draft of 2.0, and don't see any terrible rush to get
it out. This is an experiment in finding the right balance between
innovation and legacy, not some diktat from the W3C telling us to
march where we're told to march. I hope people who think they've
broken the wrong eggs or put too many weird herbs in the omlette tell the
WG that they got the balance wrong, but I have little sympathy
for the argument that they shouldn't be working on new recipes.
If not now, when? If not the W3C, who?
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