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paul@prescod.net (Paul Prescod) writes:
>What I don't understand is why XHTML 2 is NOT taking a bold swing at an
>interesting new problem domain. What if it supported rich GUIs? What if
>it brought metadata to the masses? what if it was tightly bound to SVG
>so that every element could be filtered and transformed.
Speaking as someone who's been using HTML for about eight years, I have
to say I can't really imagine why I'd want any of those things directly
in XHTML. XUL is interesting stuff, SVG is interesting stuff, and RDF is
interesting stuff, but those are all things that go well with XHTML, not
things that need to be bonded tightly with XHTML.
>I'm not saying that XHTML 2 does not matter. I'd just like to see some
>more leadership from the XHTML working group. "We've got a bunch of
>bold new ideas. Here are the ideas and here's how we plan to put them
>into XHTML 2."
I think there's already an experiment which attempted "bold new ideas
for the Web", and I have to say its failure in that area has been rather
catastrophic. Five years on I'm only starting to see Web developers
consider XML a benefit rather than a nuisance, and XSLT's learning curve
a plus rather than a minus. I've yet to see anyone outside the XML
community even express an interest in XLink or XPointer.
>When there is a problem to be solved it should be solved. Perhaps that
>is now. Perhaps not.
>From the (20, not counting my postings) responses I got on webdesign-l
last night, there are certainly people who find what XHTML 2.0 is doing
to be interesting. There are also some who find XHTML 2.0 as relevant
as CSS 3.0 - in other words, not. I found no sentiment suggesting that
XHTML 2.0 should be halted. I also found little sentiment favoring more
radical change than what's been proposed.
I'm not sure the XML community is a reasonable barometer for what is or
is not appropriate to the future of (X)HTML, and perhaps for once we
should leave such decisions to people who are actually focused on HTML.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
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