Proposed Group: DataSheets Community Group
The DataSheets Community Group has been proposed by Jonathan Crossland:
Decoupling content and data from HTML, by providing a DataSheet Language (CSS-like) to source, store and apply data to the HTML DOM. The browser will be able to take the responsibility of retrieving the data from a variety of sources and rendering it.
The group will outline the language and the full specifications for making this a reality.
You are invited to support the creation of this group. Once the group has a total of five supporters, it will be launched and people can join to begin work. In order to support the group, you will need a W3C account.
Once launched, the group will no longer be listed as “proposed”; it will be in the list of current groups.
If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please send us email on site-comments@w3.org
Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team
#DataSheets
##Abstract
This specification outlines Data Sheets, Level 1 (DSS 1.0). DSS 1.0 is a DataSheet language that allows authors to attach data to structured documents (HTML). The specification allows HTML to be separated from the data when over the wire. Traditionally a server sends HTML with the data already placed within the HTML, or with Asynchronous JavaScript, authors can inject data into the DOM. This specification outlines the means for authors to directly instruct the browser to retrieve data from sources and how to apply it to the DOM.
DSS 1.0 supports HTTP Requests and localStorage.
##Introduction to DSS 1.0
This section is non-normative.
Here is an HTML document.
My Homepage
My Homepage
This page is all about me
The content of the tags, that is the “`innerText“` and possibly “`innerHTML“`, is embedded within the HTML.
DSS 1.0 outlines the means to apply data to the HTML, just like CSS would apply a “`color“`.
To make the “““ red, we could use the following CSS:
h1{
color: red;
}
In DSS, the HTML would instead of containing the data, could look like this.
To set the data for the “““ we would set the “`data“` property to the data source and the “`set“` property to the item where the data is stored.
h1{
data: url(data.json) ‘title’;
}
where the data retrieved would look like this:
{
title : ‘My homepage’
}
The DSS consists of 2 parts, the [selector](http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/) and the “`data“` shorthand property. The data uses the url function to specify the location of the data. As you will see in the definition, there are source formats (XML, CSV, JSON) and source locations (URL, localStorage).
It is proposed that the LINK element in HTML, be extended for DSS.
DSS would provide some clear benefits :
– Separation of HTML and Data, just as we are separating HTML from CSS.
– Separating the caching strategies for Data and the HTML
– Brings the trend of updating parts of a site with ajax into the browser engine where it would understand the data.
– DSS specifies the source of 1 or more datasheets, for a given page, where the data would be HTTP Requested and returned according and processed according to mime type.
– sites that rely on AJAX, have a certain wait period (for DOM construction) before the code executes. With DSS, the browser can request the data, as it requests images.
– Applying data to DOM using selectors and formatting language, would be an internal ‘rendering template engine’ function, not a JavaScript 3rd party templating function.
I have created a prototype (rough parser) and article, explaining this in more details.
http://www.developer.web.za/News/Read/4036/datasheets-a-proposed-w3c-working-group