Community Group for Markdown Standardization
Jelks Cabaniss
jelks at jelks.nu
Wed Nov 21 03:20:32 EST 2012
Hi Paul,
First, thank you for coming on this list. Secondly, I'm glad to see
Markdown even being considered by the W3C for standardization. John Gruber
-- even if he isn't -- should be proud. His idea was genius.
That said, the original Markdown has no concept of class and id attributes
on arbitrary elements, even div and span elements -- you currently have to
resort to "regular" HTML. Since you are looking at implementing the W3C
Aria accessibility attributes, I hope you folks will look into this.
Thanks (and welcome!:),
Jelks
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 8:36 PM, marbux <marbux at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> Caveat, I am only a participant in the W3C group being discussed and
> am not its spokesman. So please take what I say with a grain of salt.
>
> @ Sherwood Botsford: "The only way I've been able to figure out how to
> work with this would
> be as follows:
>
> "Every MD implementation would have to have two behaviours, set either
> by a command line flag, a configuration file, or a preference if used
> with a GUI. One behaviour would be the individual behavior so that
> the followers of that implementation wouldn't be left in the lurch.
> One would be the standard behavior."
>
> I think the behavioral switch could be handled automatically if the
> standardized version has its its own doctype declaration and profile
> header. If the doc has the doctype declaration, then process the doc
> as the standardized version of markdown; if not, then apply the
> implementation's unique default processing.
>
> @ Fletcher T. Penney: Although the working group is very new, there
> seems to be some preliminary consensus (of varying degrees) emerging
> on some issues, but it all needs input from implementers:
>
> 1. Outreach to implementers for participation.
>
> 2. Aiming for a core profile of markdown that is near universal along
> with a corresponding schema.
>
> 3. Inventorying MD extensions used in the most popular MD
> implementations and exploring what might be done to define one or more
> profiles that superset the core profile. Related, see the table of
> implementations under construction at
> <http://www.w3.org/community/markdown/wiki/MarkdownImplementations>.
>
> 4. Target XHTML 1.1 plus a sprinkling of W3C Aria accessibility
> attributes as the output format for transformations. See this thread
> for more detail.
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-markdown/2012Nov/0094.html>.
> (I've suggested "Accessible Markdown" as the name for the project and
> its deliverables. Bridging the A11Y gap is in my view a major
> incentive for MD implementers to participate in the working group and
> to implement its deliverables. This is a legal requirement for web
> sites at least in the U.S. and E.U. Although enforcement has been lax
> so far, there is no guarantee that enforcement won't be ramped up
> later.)
>
> No feedback yet, but I've suggested borrowing heavily from the W3C
> Compound Document by Reference
> Framework conformance requirements for layered profiles.
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CDR-20070718/#conformance>. E.g. "A
> conformant user agent of a superset profile specification must process
> subset profile content as if it were the superset profile content."
>
> @ Aristotle Pagaltzis: "Keep it conservative: stick to existing
> implicit consensus, concentrate on working out the edge cases and
> formalising. That is what will provide value. Anyone who is after new
> features can implement them independently and if a feature works out
> it will then be heard of anyway. "
>
> This is exactly where we seem to be aiming except for the
> accessibility attributes in the output format.
>
> > The exception to that is support for the one feature that is likely to
> be added which has no
> > direct support in HTML, precisely because of that lack of direct
> expressibility in HTML,
> > namely footnotes. (Or has HTML 5 provided a solution here (and one that
> isn’t still
> > evolving)?) "
>
> Kinda'/Sorta'. HTML 5 has the "aside" element that was originally
> stuck in with footnotes in mind.
> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/single-page.html#the-aside-element>. But
> it's really just a container that can be positioned on the page with
> CSS. No footnote/endnote-specific markup. (I'll omit my long rant
> about browser developers and their mindset when it comes to HTML spec
> footnote proposals. Let it suffice to observe that repurposing of
> content never enters their minds when the topic of footnotes comes
> up.)
>
> I'll pass along your suggestion regarding a test suite.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Paul E. "Marbux" Merrell, J.D.
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