[uf-discuss] The BBC case and HTML5 <time>

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Toby A Inkster wrote:
> I wrote:
> 
>> Adopting <time> does not require fully switching to HTML 5.
>> Validation can be achieved through using a custom DTD.
> 
> Here's an example of how this can be done - a customised version of HTML 
> 4.01 strict using hCalendar with <time>, plus a little RDFa.
> 
> http://buzzword.org.uk/2008/html4plus-example.html
> 
> This is parsed quite nicely into iCalendar by Cognition, apart from the 
> <time> element, which Cognition doesn't support yet:
> 
> http://srv.buzzword.org.uk/icalendar/buzzword.org.uk/2008/html4plus-example.html 

I guess it depends on what the purpose of validating markup is.

That may validate to an SGML DTD, but it's not conforming HTML 4.01 
(it's not valid HTML 4.01) and for what it's worth the HTML 4.01 
specification specifically warns against extending text/html in this manner:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.1

For <time> specifically, the benefits of a custom DTD over just using 
Henri Sivonen's HTML5 validator is unclear to me:

http://validator.nu/

I'd be wary of using a hybrid of HTML 4.01, RDfa, and HTML5 when neither 
RDFa nor HTML5 have been finalized yet, and when HTML5 is going to 
determine how browsers actually parse all text/html. What if HTML5 ends 
up specifying something in a way that is incompatible with the hybrid?

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis