Re: Support Existing Content

On May 1, 2007, at 2:17 PM, T.V Raman wrote:

>
> Despite your assertion that that's what WA1.0 does,
> I think the feedback you're receiving loud and clear from everyone  
> from outside
> the community that wrote that spec  is to the contrary.

I think the people giving such feedback are either uninformed or  
misunderstanding the spec. That's why I am trying to clarify what the  
spec says. It has separate document and user agent conformance  
requirements, where the document requirements are more strict. This  
is a fact, regardless of how many people give feedback to the contrary.

> To date, I've seen all of that feedback dismissed rather  
> peremptorily  ---
> and in some sense, just asserting "that is what we're doing" is
> also just as dismissive.

Can you give evidence that the spec does not do this? I can  
definitely state based on having read it that the requirements for  
content producers define a stricter language than the requirements  
for producers. No number of opinions otherwise

> I personally dont concur with that assertion.

Regardless of who concurs or not, it is true. Split conformance  
requirements are a matter of fact, not opinion. Here is a specific  
example, from the definition of the 'img' element:

<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-img>

"The img element represents a piece of text with an alternate  
graphical representation. The text is given by the alt attribute,  
which must be present, and the URI to the graphical representation of  
that text is given in the src attribute, which must also be present.
...
If the alt attribute is omitted, user agents must treat the element  
as if it had an alt attribute set to the empty string."

Notice that it requires content producers to include an alt attribute  
on img, but requires content consumers to handle a missing alt  
attribute in a specific way. So this is an example of exactly what  
you asked for, a stricter language for produxers than consumers.

Now, it's possible to debate whether the spec goes far enough in  
splitting user agent and document requirements. But whether it does  
so at all is not debatable.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 1 May 2007 21:49:03 UTC