- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:30:23 -0700
- To: Josef Spillner <spillner@wwwrn.inf.tu-dresden.de>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
Hi Josef, On Apr 11, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Josef Spillner wrote: > > Am Mittwoch, 11. April 2007 04:10 schrieben Sie: >> HTML 4 is so underspecified it's a miracle it's even implemented. >> And I am one of the few here (with Murray, Chris and Dan) who were >> already here in the HTML WG for HTML 4. > > Has there ever been an analysis of why this happened? I would be > interested to > know if the spec was already considered vague at the time of > finishing the > draft, or if it was granting too much freedom to implementors. I think at the time it was written, we had very different norms for what constitutes a good standard in the web standards community. Since then, I think the following norms have evolved: * More preference for specified behavior over undefined or implementation-specific behavior, even though the latter gives more freedom to implementations. * An expectation of clearly stated conformance requirements. * Review of specifications with the idea that the conformance requirements will become testable assertions for a comprehensive test suite. Given these changes in attitude, the web standards community today has much higher expectations for what makes a good spec. Regards, Maciej
Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2007 22:30:35 UTC