Back in 2001, the XHTML working group published XHTML 1.1, a set of XML DTDs to allow people to use HTML4's semantics together with XHTML Ruby in XML.
That document contained a very minor mistake. In HTML4, the usemap attribute of img elements is defined to take a URI, but in the XHTML 1.1 specification, it's defined as taking an IDREF. The working group actually had already known about it in 2000, but had decided it wasn't a big deal to break compatibility here. (Sorry, that's a W3C member-only link — the XHTML working group is not an open working group; it does all its work in secret.)
In late 2001, the group discussed the issue and decided to reopen it (secret link again).
In early 2002, Jukka K. Korpela reported the issue to the working group. The XHTML working group replied saying they'd discussed this and agreed to fix it (secret link again, sorry). They even actually did agree (secret) to fix it, a few weeks after announcing they had so agreed.
It was reported in passing in mid-2002 in the HTML validator mailing list, where it was reiterated by the HTML working group that this was a mistake that would be fixed.
The issue was once again reported in 2004 by Bjoern Hoehrmann. This time, the working group replied (in secret) that they had decided that it wasn't in fact an error, but that it would be changed in future versions of XHTML, just not in the XHTML 1.1 version. (No trace of Tantek's proposal remaining.)
At the end of 2004, it was again reported on the validator mailing list. The HTML working group did not reply.
It was once again reported in 2006 by Anne van Kesteren. There, the working group said they agreed "in principle" (and in secret) but that they would do the change in a later version, rather than fixing the XHTML 1.1 specification. Anne made it clear that this wasn't satisfactory, but the working group dismissed (secretely) his concerns saying it was the group's explicit goal not to fix problems while they updated the specification.
While all that was happening: in 2004 a group of people including myself formed an open working group known as the WHAT working group and started working on a specification for HTML5. As of today, that specification is mostly complete; I'm now going through the thousands of e-mails of feedback we received over the past few years. One of the things that spec does is specify exactly how usemap should work, both for HTML and XHTML: it's really neither a URI nor an IDREF, it's what we're calling a hashed ID reference, and it has very specific parsing rules and processing models, which are detailed carefully and completely.
Meanwhile, the XHTML working group has published a new draft of XHTML 1.1, which still has the IDREF problem.
In fact, the only change I can see is that they added XML Schema support, along with a boatload of new boilerplate text to put at the top of the document. Your XHTML 1.1 conformant documents now start with (the emphasised parts are the required bits, the rest can thankfully still be skipped):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/SCHEMA/xhtml11.xsd">
In contrast, an HTML5 conformant documents start with:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
So. To recap. In the time it took the closed and secretive XHTML working group to release a new version of this specification which did not fix one of its simplest problems despite that problem being reported multiple times, the open and transparent WHAT working group wrote an entire HTML specification, more detailed than any previous such effort, and fixed the problem in the process.
2007-03-08 20:32 UTC
How YOU can join the W3C HTML5 Working Group in six easy steps
So the W3C announced that
they are restarting an HTML specification effort.
Anyone can actually join the W3C HTML Working Group. I encourage
everyone interested in the development of HTML5 to take part. If you
don't take part, and the language develops in a way you don't like,
then you have but yourself to blame.
Taking part in the group is not a big commitment. You can spend as
much or as little time contributing; you don't need to read every
e-mail on subjects you don't care about, you don't need to call in or
attend face-to-face meetings. In fact, the W3C has stated in the
group's charter that no binding decisions will be made at meetings;
you are guaranteed equal say whether you are present or not.
To join, you have to go through the following steps.
Fill in the Public Access Request
Form; in the "Reason" field, put: "To apply for participation in
the HTML Working Group as an Invited Expert."
Within about five minutes you'll receive a confirmation code by
e-mail. Follow the instructions in that e-mail.
You should get a reply back from that within two days, giving you
a username and password. Fill in the W3C Invited Expert
Application form. Under "Financial Support", if you're not going
to attend any meetings or if you're going to attend meetings on your
own dime, just put "Self-supported". Under "Possible W3C Membership",
if you're employed but your employer doesn't know you're doing this,
or doesn't care, just pick "My employer does not intend to join".
E-mail Dan Connolly and Karl Dubost (connolly@w3.org,
karl@w3.org) asking for approval. (Just say "Hi, I'd like to join the
HTML working group. Thanks.")
You should get a reply back within about ten days, at which point
you can fill in the Joining the HTML
Working Group form.
You will get a reply back from that within about five minutes, at
which point you're a bone fide HTML working group member!
Note: if you work for a W3C member company, the steps above don't
apply to you. Instead, you have to follow these
instructions.
I would encourage everyone interested in working with the HTML
working group to go through these steps as soon as possible, so that
you will be a member of the group before the work starts.
I've been playing a lot of Little Green Guys With Guns recently, a highly addictive graphical play-by-e-mail turn based strategy game.
For that last few games, my score has been oscillating:
To make my score go up higher, I need more inexperienced players to beat (because the experienced ones are too freaking good). So. Go join up! Play challenges I put out!
I'm sitting in the Green Room of the Lucie Stern theatre in Palo Alto, where I'm
volunteering on the stage crew of The Merry Widow. Actually for this
performance I'm volunteering as a stage crew substitute for when other crew members
can't make it. I didn't want to do a third Opera in a row (I was on the crew of Macbeth and The Queen of Spades earlier
this season).
Speaking of Cats, and friends, Brian, Lisa, her parents, Carey, and myself went
to see the Moscow Cats Theatre at
the Palace of Fine Arts in the city. I was wearing my cat socks and my "CAT PERSON"
t-shirt, and Carey and I were sitting front row centre. As you might imagine, I
ended up on stage for one of the tricks; a cat jumped back and forth on my back! It
was awesome.
By the way, the WHATWG site (and this Web log, and lots of other sites I use)
are all now carbon
neutral, hosted by DreamHost. Nice guys. I'd recommend them.
Talking about HTML, Tantek has started pushing for a new acronym for me to add to
my list of acronyms that don't mean anything new: now, in addition to DHTML, REST,
and AJAX, he is adding POSH. Plain
Old Semantic HTML. It's actually a pretty good thing to be pushing for. I encourage
everyone to publish POSH.
So Apple started selling music without DRM the other day. I immediately bought some music. Carey commented that she had bought a lot of
music on iTunes in the past and never really understood DRM, so wasn't worried about it.
Later that evening, we were at my flat, where there is no Internet. She wanted to play her music on my Mac Mini, which is basically my
entertainment system. She made her MacBook join my wireless network, grabbed the remote and fired up Front Row on the Mini, and (after I fixed
the firewall settings) tried playing a song she wanted to listen to.
A concise lesson in why DRM is not a "consumer enablement" technology ensued.
I really don't understand why DRM is legal, let alone why it's legally enforceable in many countries. Right now I think it's mostly just the
geeks who understand why DRM is fundamentally stupid, but I hope that as more users get exposed to technology and try to do obvious things like
transferring their media from one device to another, they'll come to demand their fair use rights, and the law will swing back from backing the
modern organised crime rings (like the MPAA) to backing the ordinary citizen. Question copyright.
Everyone should make sure to learn about fair(y) use.
For the recent long weekend, Carey and I went to Monterey to see the aquarium. We joined and visited the fishies four times that weekend.
Some of the exhibits were more art-like than I expected:
We also went down Scenic Highway 1, which has some scenic parts, and where petroleum is even more expensive than in less remote areas.
Before we left we stayed at Carey's, where Max decided to bring me a live bird! What a darling cat. He's so cute.
In other news, I met the TAG for lunch today. It was an interesting experience. I still don't really understand what they're doing. At one
point I asked about one of their documents and pointed out that for most specs things have to be defined in terms of document models, not the
actual byte streams coming over the wire. For example, for HTML you have to define what happens when an author creates a table
element using the DOM APIs and then moves a p element into it — what does that represent. There's no source byte stream, it's all scripted. The
members of the TAG seemed to think that was a little more complicated than they wanted to deal with. That was sort of strange to me, since I
somewhat consider that to be the only interesting case (in the HTML5 spec, the byte stream, if any, is converted to a DOM before any of the
things that they were talking about are examined). Oh well.
June is going to be an interesting month. The HTML working group is supposed to publish something (I suggest the spec); Apple is going to announce their latest stuff, which I'll probably
buy; Pixar are releasing Ratatouille (Holy Pixar Day is June 29th); Wilhelm will be in from out of town so we can play World of Warcraft (the
board game).
