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

[Michael[tm] Smith]

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>, 2012-11-29 21:48 -0800:

> The WHATWG has pretty clearly rejected the idea of the <main> element

I don't think that assertion's true.

Yeah, Hixie rejected it. And has consistently rejected every time we've had
this discussion come up in WHATWG fora over the years;

But I think among people active in the WHATWG over those same years, there
have been more who support adding it than there are who clearly reject it.
And that to me at least that still seems to be the state of things now.

Simon Pieters, for example, is one who's expressed strong support:

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Nov/0055.html

And others like James Craig have said something along the lines of "I think
it seems like a reasonable idea":

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Nov/0064.html

And then there are of others active in the WHATWG who just haven't
expressed an opinion on it either way.

Anyway as I said, the discussion about it in the WHATWG has been coming up
for years -- long before the HTML WG got around to noticing. The reason it
stalled in those WHATWG discussions every time was not because of any clear
consensus in the WHATWG to reject it ever emerged, but instead simply
because Hixie rejected it each time and didn't spec anything out for it.

I'm not stating a position on it here to say that Hixie is right or wrong
about it. I'm just saying that it's not at all the case that there's strong
consensus to reject it among the people who are most active in the WHATWG.

> 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.

As far as I can see, there is no split. If anything, the evidence seems to
suggest there's more support for it in the WHATWG overall than there is
strong opposition to it. And there are some who while not wholly supportive
have said they don't feel strongly enough about it to block it; e.g., along
the lines of the position Ojan expressed in his recent message here:

  http://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2012-November/023001.html

"All I meant to say is that I wouldn't fight to block this feature
if another reviewer felt there was enough agreement to r+ the patch."

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike