[LINK] HTML 5 V XHTML 2 web schism

[Tom Worthington]

The HTML 5 Editor's Draft was issued 28 June 2007 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/>, prepared by Ian Hickson at Google 
and David Hyatt at Apple:

"This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core 
language of the World Wide Web, HTML. In this version, new features 
are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are 
introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and 
special attention has been given to defining clear conformance 
criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability."

HTML 5 appears to be a philosophical split from XHTML 2. Whereas 
XHTML 2 is for representing documents on screens and print, HTML 5 
seems to be for interactive computer interfaces. For example:

"XHTML2 [XHTML2] defines a new HTML vocabulary with better features 
for hyperlinks, multimedia content, annotating document edits, rich 
metadata, declarative interactive forms, and describing the semantics 
of human literary works such as poems and scientific papers.

However, it lacks elements to express the semantics of many of the 
non-document types of content often seen on the Web. For instance, 
forum sites, auction sites, search engines, online shops, and the 
like, do not fit the document metaphor well, and are not covered by XHTML2. "

Also the tone of the document, especially the editor's comments, seem 
to be much more confrontational, than XHTML's academic style. The 
HTML 5 editors are essentially saying that they are going to produce 
a usable standard and so everyone either needs to get on board or get 
out of their way. An example is:

"Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. 
Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to 
find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible 
ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it 
eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the 
aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions."

Much of what the authors are saying makes sense, but the way they are 
saying it is likely to not go down well in consensus based forums.

ps: Much of the philosophy of HTML 5 seems to be embedded in the 
Apple iPhone. But that device can use ordinary old HTML web pages 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/iphone.shtml>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml