[hoppipolla]

From an implementation point of view, putting everything in a single attribute is way simpler; the design of <video> is quite problematic. The reason is that with a single attribute everything can be processed atomically. With a design based on multiple elements things can happen between elements being processed, creating many more edge cases.

Although in general things that make authoring easier are preferred, designs that are easy to implement in a bug-free way are generally preferred over designs that are complex and likely to lead to interoperability issues. After all, having to fight implementation differences is a rather common complaint about the web platform.

It also hasn't been clearly demonstrated that multiple elements are easier to work with. They are more familiar, but significantly more verbose. I don't know how that plays out in practice.

[ZenPsycho]

And even if what you say about nesting is true- It's already a part of the standards for video, audio, and objects. It's not like we can change our minds about those. So we make the whole language inconsistent just because?

[ZenPsycho]

I gave you a whole list of options but you only focus on these two. why?

[hoppipolla]

Because I was making a specific point about the implementation complexity of things that depend on attributes vs things that depend on many elements.