Discussion Topics for HTML / TAG working group meeting at TPAC 2009

The TAG and HTML working groups will be holding a joint meeting on 4 November 2009, at the W3C 2009 Technical Plenary in Santa Clara. The following are suggested discussion topics (these were first discussed in the email thread at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/tag/2009Oct/0077.html).

TAG/HTML-WG Coordination

• Background:
  • The TAG considers the success of HTML 5 to be a top priority. (I.e. we're here to help)
  • The TAG spent much of the summer reading the entire HTML draft.
  • Collected/discussed/culled many potential concerns (http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2009/09/HTMLIssues.pdf). Many have been/will be raised as comments by individuals, if at all.
• Discussion: going forward, are there other ways that the TAG can be helpful? (Suggestion: we discuss this after the specific issues below.)

text/html media type

Specific concerns regarding the media type include:

• Treatment of XML served as text/html.
  • Polyglot content
  • HTML 5 specification states: "XML documents that... must not be served text/html". Sam Ruby reports progress (Sam's email: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/tag/2009Nov/0009.html; IRC discussion: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20091103#l-25)
• Does the registration follow IETF conventions for dealing with earlier versions of HTML?

URI/IRI/WebAddr

• Get status report for Larry Masinter & HTML WG members. Note HTML Change Proposal just announced "change definition of URL to normative reference to IRIBIS" (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009Nov/0005.html); Sam Ruby opens http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8207
• To what extent is Web Address being moved into IRI-bis?
• Key question: is the timeline for IRI work consistent with the timeline for HTML 5?
• Are there pieces that need to stay in HTML 5?

Embedding data in HTML Documents

• General concern with inclusion of data capabilities in core HTML 5 specification
• Microdata:
  • What are plans for factoring this in a separate specification?
• data-* attributes:
  • What are the intended use cases for data-* attributes? Are they for externally visible data?
  • Is it appropriate to have data-* in the core HTML 5 specification?

Language Reference/Authoring Specification

• Background:
  • At Mandelieu in 2008, some TAG members suggested it would be beneficial to have a specification for the HTML language itself, separate from the user agent specification.
  • Since than, Ian Hickson has announced (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-comments/2009Jun/0016.html ) availability of a draft http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/?style=author
  • Mike Smith's draft (http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/)
  • Lachlan Hunt's "A Web Developer's Guide to HTML 5" (http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/)
  • The TAG has no specific request or recommendation at this time, but remains interested in how this work goes.
• Status update from HTML WG: is there anything other than the above that the take should be aware of?
• Discussion?