Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Jumping the gun on HTML 5
With the release of Firefox 3.5, references to the "HTML 5 standard" are on the rise in tech news. CNET refers to "new standards such as HTML 5." The Christian Science Monitor says "this latest version [of Firefox] adds support for the HTML 5 web standard." BNET Technology has a whole article on HTML 5 without once suggesting that it isn't in final form.
But as the World Wide Web Consortium notes, HTML 5 is still a long way from being settled. The latest working draft states: "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." (Emphasis in the original.)
This most likely means that there will be several different "HTML 5"s from different vendors, and that it will be a long time before they all come close to agreement. HTML 5 was intended to close the gap among different implementations by specifying more aspects of the language and basing it on an object model rather than a syntactic one, but we're probably in for more of the same techno-Babel.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
W3C rescinds four drafts
This is unusual; W3C has rescinded four XHTML-related drafts. This means that they roll back to the previous versions. The rescinded drafts are:
- XHTML™ 1.1 - Module-based XHTML - Second Edition
- XHTML™ Basic 1.1 - Second Edition
- XHTML-Print - Second Edition
- XHTML™ 1.0
Friday, April 24, 2009
HTML 5 update
W3C has published new working drafts of:
- HTML 5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
- HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4
- The Web Sockets API
- Server-sent Events
- Web Storage
- Web Workers
The last four are newly broken out from the HTML 5 specification. Or should we call it Ginormica?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
New working drafts from XML working security group
Monday, December 01, 2008
XML 1.0, fifth edition
W3C has published the fifth edition of the XML 1.0 specification (W3C Recommendation). While XML 1.0 has been stable for quite a long time, this edition incorporates a significant correction, which "relaxes the restrictions on element and attribute names, thereby providing in XML 1.0 the major end user benefit currently achievable only by using XML 1.1. As a consequence, many possible documents that were not well-formed according to previous editions of this specification are now well-formed, and previously invalid documents using the newly-allowed name characters in, for example, ID attributes, are now valid."
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Guide to HTML 5
The Web Developer's Guide to HTML 5 is available as an Editor's Draft on the W3C website.
There are some annoying discrepancies between HTML 4 and XHTML, at least formally. For example, say you want to insert a <br> tag into a page. In HTML, strictly following the rules, you have to leave the tag unmatched. The trailing-slash construct of XML isn't allowed in HTML, and an explicit closing tag is strictly speaking not permitted either. In XHTML, of course, you must close the tag, either using <br/> or <br></br> This meant you couldn't use the same markup for HTML and XHTML. In practice this really isn't an issue, since just about all current browsers do allow the trailing slash for HTML, but it's still an annoyance for strict validation. HTML 5, however, allows the trailing slash, so HTML and XHTML can use the same markup for line breaks.
The article says: "Both the HTML and XHTML syntax appear similar and it is possible to mark up documents using a common subset of of the syntax that is the same in both, while avoiding the syntactic sugar that is unique to each." Perhaps this is really true, or close to it.
Monday, June 16, 2008
XHTML for small devices
W3C has issued two proposed recommendations related to XHTML for mobile phones, PDAs, and other limited devices.
- XHTML Basic 1.1 is "designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features; for example, Web clients such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes."
- XHTML Modularization "provides a means for subsetting and extending XHTML, a feature needed for extending XHTML's reach onto emerging platforms."
New publications on HTML 5
On June 10, W3C issued three new documents related to HTML 5:
- HTML 5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML. This is the latest (but still in flux) draft of the HTML 5 spec.
- HTML 5 Publication Notes. This covers changes since January to the draft specification.
- HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4. It's not as long as I expected it to be, but the changes are still major.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
XML Security Working Group
W3C has announced the creation of the XML Security Working Group. The basis of its charter is the report from the W3C Workshop on Next Steps for XML Signature and XML Encryption, September 2007. The primary issues it will address are signatures and encryption.
Monday, May 19, 2008
XQuery and XPath
W3C has published a Candidate Recommendation for XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
One World. One Web, One Great Firewall
This is a departure from my policy of only posting news and commentary about file formats, but the silence of technical people on W3C's playing up to the Chinese government is just too much to take.
W3C is holding its 2008 conference in Beijing, being very careful not to utter a single suggestion that China is censoring Web access, or that there would be anything wrong with it even if it were.
Try searching www2008.org for censorship. I get zero results.
Or filtering? Two hits here, neither relating to its use by governments.
Instead, we get obsequious text like this newsletter excerpt:
1. Come face-to-face with those individuals who are shaping the Web of the future
2. Participate in the best technical program of any conference on Web technology
3. Increase your knowledge in a comprehensive flight of tutorials and workshops
4. Join the activities of the leading Web organizations
5. Dine in one of the architectural wonders of the world - The Great Hall of the People
6. Get caught up in the Olympic fever sweeping Beijing
7. Immerse yourself in the magical culture of China
8. Sightsee in one of the world's greatest cities - wander through the Forbidden City and climb the Great Wall
9. Experience the exotic cuisine of China and Beijing
10. Shop for gifts and memories of your attendance to WWW2008
W3C, all the people who have spoken out and been arrested in China thank you for nothing.
Labels: W3C
Saturday, March 29, 2008
A batch of documents from W3C
New from W3C in the past few days:
- Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Grouping of Resources (working draft).
- Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Requirements Version 2.0 (first public working draft). This is relevant to XSL-FO, not XSLT.
- XML Signature Syntax and Processing (second edition, proposed edited recommendation).
- XML Query (XQuery) 1.1 Use Cases (working draft).
- Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 (3rd working draft).
- Basic XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0 (second last call public working draft, superseding the "first last call").
- Advanced XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0 (working draft).
- XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0 (working draft).
- XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0 Use Cases (working draft).
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Boycott WWW2008
In the light of China's recent outrages in Tibet -- not to mention its ongoing Web censorship -- I urge all who care about human liberty to boycott WWW2008 in Beijing.
The theme of the conference is "One World, One Web." China's Great Firewall is the antithesis of this claim.
I've left a comment to this effect at the conference workshop blog. Any bets on how long it stays up? It vanished some time this afternoon, within twelve hours of my posting it. I'm a little surprised it stayed up for the first hour. It's sad, though inevitable given the venue, that W3C is collaborating with Chinese censorship.
Labels: W3C
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Best practices for XML internationalization
Best Practices for XML Internationalization is now a W3C working group note.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
XML 10
In honor of the tenth anniversary of the release of XML 1.0, W3C has put up a celebratory page.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
HTML 5 draft
W3C has published an early working draft for HTML 5. It warns readers: "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." This is expanded with lots of warnings and notations in bright red boxes.
Let the arguments begin!
Friday, December 21, 2007
W3C EXI documents
One last item before the holiday break.
The Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Working Group has announced the publication of three new documents:
These are all still in the Working Draft stage.
EXI can represent either XML documents or XML fragments, which may be compressed; pluggable codecs are supported. An EXI body is based on SAX-like events rather than elements. There are a number of XML devotees who are unhappy with the idea.
