Re: Proposal for developing HTML 5 materials for Web *authors*

Dean Edridge wrote:
> Of course my suggestions are intended to benefit the whole world. I 
> wouldn't just come up with an idea that solely suited me.
> 
> My idea is based on increasing interoperability between serialisations, 
> reducing inconsistencies between documents that will have been produced 
> by differrent people and different tools/machines.

The problem with focussing on an issue as minor as whether or not 
attributes should be quoted is that everyone has their own opinion on 
the matter, yet no solid, technical reasoning that justifies why one 
technique applies equally to everyone in all cases.

It is certainly true that some people do benefit from always quoting 
attribute values, perhaps because they feel it makes the coding style 
more consistent or because they author for both HTML and XHTML, and 
minimising the differences between the two is convenient and can improve 
work flow.  However, those reasons do not apply to everyone and there is 
no reason to force the issue.  Some people prefer to omit the attributes 
because of the convenience of typing less.

In my opinion, the authoring spec should clearly and concisely explain 
that both quoting and not quoting attributes is conforming, detail the 
pros and cons of each method and encourage authors to choose a 
consistent approach that works for them in their environment.  I'm am 
absolutely opposed to subsetting the conforming syntax for HTML5 to 
always require quoted attributes, or vice versa.

This also applies to related issues like whether or not to include the 
trailing slash in void elements; whether or not to include optional 
start and end tags; and whether or not to minimise boolean attributes.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 18:39:39 UTC