W3C, you ignorant slut!

[With apologies to Jane Curtin]

You know.... some people just don't get it. Most likely, most of the time, I am one of those people. This week, I get a pass. Because the management at the W3C have taken the cake, as it were. They have grabbed up all the "just don't get it" supply there is. The rest of us, for this week, can do whatever we want and still be as right as rain.

What did they do to achieve this? Well... They lost sight of their goals. They basically forgot that there was a plan that was going to take the web from HTML 3.2 to extensible grammars and follow-your-nose semantic magic. They forgot that there was a path to a web that was not just connected, but also accessible and meaningful. In a word, they gave in to the seductive siren call of HTML5.

(Disclaimer. I have been involved in the HTML and XHTML activities at the W3C since 1996. I am the lead editor for most of the XHTML specifications, and I have great passion for the X in XHTML - extensibility.)

What's wrong with HTML5? Nothing. Everything. Parts. Depends on what problem you are trying to solve. IMHO, at its core, HTML5 is just a really, really bad idea. The primary design principle for this language is "codify everything in use on the net, everywhere, no matter how broken, as long as Hixie has seen it at least once and thinks it is useful". How can that possibly be helpful (to anyone other than Hixie or Google)? I mean, sure... if you were writing a guide for the next browser manufacturer to come in and create a new browser that would be able to handle every broken web page on the planet, this would be a useful tool. But that's not a standard. That's an implementors guide. There are between 5 and 15 actual user agent implementors in the world. There are millions of web content authors. How is it that the 15 (I'm feeling magnaminous) are more important than the millions? I don't know. Let's ask TimBL - father of the web and master of all things W3C.

Oh. Wait. We can't. Tim recently got a promotion. Someone coughed up a bunch of money so he could form the World Wide Web Foundation (ironically, an organization that can't put up a web page that is valid!). He's off playing in a new sandbox. But I'm sure he hasn't forgotten us. After all, at the W3C the Director has absolute authority. Nothing can start or finish in the W3C without his approval. Oh Tim! Where are you when we need you most?

Or do we need you? It was under your leadership that this whole mess got started. It was you who decided to irreparably damage the brand(s) of the W3C by ceding control of the web to the WHATWG. What were you thinking? I assume you were under pressure from the browser vendors. I assume those 4 out of your ~400 members were saying "hey, we don't want to implement XML-based semantic web. It's haaaaaard (insert whine here)".

Well, guess what? It is hard. So What(WG)? The W3C has a clear mandate from its members. From its advisory committee. And that mandate is spelled out pretty well in the W3C's mission statement: "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web." In what way is locking the web into a browser-developer controlled, non-extensible, non-XML language "ensur(ing) long-term growth for the Web?"

In my opinion, it's not. Instead, it is shackling the web content developers (like me) into the tag-soup architecture of the 90's. There is nothing about HTML5 that represents long-term growth. Nothing that represents industry consensus about how the structure of web content should mature so that it is accessible to the handicapped. Nothing that makes it easier to markup content with its semantics in an extensible way. Nothing that allows the use of long-agreed upon W3C Recommendations.

Actually, that's the saddest part of this whole story. The W3C is an organization that has spent many years developing "Recommendations" (read "standards" when I say that) that support its core architecture. XML, XML Namespaces, XHTML, MathML, SVG, RDF, OWL, etc. All of these are designed to work together to support the long term vision of the organization - one that promotes dynamic extensibility of the "web" by different groups at different times. The HTML5 activity ignores this fundamental guiding principle of the W3C. Instead, the HTML5 activity seems to believe that if it isn't written down in their specification, it doesn't exist. And if it is was written down elsewhere, but not in a way that is absolutely perfect according to the arbitrary and capricious rules of the HTML5 editor, then it needs to be re-written, solidified, and while they are at it changed in ways the original authors never intended (see their redefinition of what a URL is or their relegation of the definition of rel attribute values to the WHATWG). Or worse yet, replaced completely by something competing and incompatible (e.g., RDFa vs the much maligned microdata).

So, I was wrong. We do need TimBL, or someone in the W3C management to stand up and say "bullshit! This is wrong. The work that is going on in the HTML5 activity is inconsistent with the W3C goals for the web." The web community needs leadership with vision, not blinders. It needs an eye toward the future, not a detailed, Hubble-esque view of the distant past. Oh Sir Tim, where are you when we need you most?