Re: Support Existing Content

Roger Johansson wrote:
  > Much of the current discussion could be avoided if the spec clearly 
said
> something to the extent of "Browsers must implement and render junk 
> markup interoperably, but authors (Web designers, developers, writers, 
> CMS tools, WYSIWYG tools, etc.) must not use any of these deprecated 
> elements and attributes."
> 
> Basically a clear distinction between what browsers have to accept (all 
> HTML that has ever been created) and what authors are allowed to use 
> (semantic, accessible, non-presentational HTML).

This has been said before but since it is important, it bears repeating. 
The WHATWG draft is pretty clearly divided into two sets of criteria:

1) Criteria for authoring conforming documents. This is where rules like
"The head element
Contexts in which this element may be used:
As the first element in an html element."
are defined. There are also a few rules that apply only to certain 
classes of author e.g. the provision of <font> for WYSIWYG editors.

2) Criteria that conforming UAs must meet. These sections contain 
extensive, interoperably implementable, details on how <head> should be 
interpreted when it is _not_ the first child of a html element, for 
example. They also contain variable rules depending on the type of UA; 
for example conformance checkers may halt on the first parse error.

By making this distinction we can hope to achieve both interoperability 
between UAs on documents in the real world and a well-designed language 
that has the right mix of features for authors.

Of course there is some coupling between the criteria; we cannot 
introduce a language feature that cannot (or, equivalently, will not) be 
implemented by UAs. This means that we need to ensure backward 
compatibility in our designs.

-- 
"Instructions to follow very carefully.
Go to Tesco's.  Go to the coffee aisle.  Look at the instant coffee. 
Notice that Kenco now comes in refil packs.  Admire the tray on the 
shelf.  It's exquiste corrugated boxiness. The way how it didn't get 
crushed on its long journey from the factory. Now pick up a refil bag. 
Admire the antioxidant claim.  Gaze in awe at the environmental claims 
written on the back of the refil bag.  Start stroking it gently, its my 
packaging precious, all mine....  Be thankful that Amy has only given 
you the highlights of the reasons why that bag is so brilliant."
-- ajs

Received on Tuesday, 1 May 2007 08:40:32 UTC