[webkit-dev] Adding <main> element to WebCore

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Nov 29, 2012, at 8:35 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 7:32 PM, James Craig <jcraig at apple.com> wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2012, at 7:10 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
> 
> > I don't see a harm in waiting another couple of weeks or months until standards discussion settles assuming that the main element doesn't become the longdesc of the next decade.
> 
> Don't confuse the two. The argument over the @longdesc extension is not even close to unanimous even within the accessibility development circles. Major objections to @longdesc came from several of us working full-time on accessibility.
> 
> I was not intending to confuse the two. What I all meant to point out is that there still is an active debate. I mean just look at responses on this thread. There are people objecting to this feature. That’s a good indication that the feature is still premature.
> 
> I’m not necessarily objecting to adding this feature to WebKit at some point. All I’m asking is to wait until standards discussion settles.

I think this thread does not show a clear consensus either way, at least at this time.

I worry though, that more standards discussion will not resolve the impasses. The HTML WG has moved forward with its <main> element specification and that seems unlikely to change. The WHATWG has pretty clearly rejected the idea of the <main> element and that seems unlikely to change. I am not sure how we as a community should deal with an impasse where there is a split like this and little hope of resolving it. It seems there are precedents in both directions and folks judge on the merits (for example, the community clearly does not favor support for HTML+RDFa and its related API, but there is ongoing implementation work for Encrypted Media Extensions; both of these are html extensions pushed by the w3c but rejected by the whatwg).

Regards,
Maciej


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