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

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007, Karl Dubost wrote:
> 
> The fact for example to say you should write
> 	<p class="boo">…</p>
> 	or <p class='boo'>…</p>
> does not change anything to the parsing algorithm, doesn't change 
> anything to the implementation of browsers.

I've been having trouble working out exactly what you were proposing in 
this thread so far. But it seems that you are actually proposing that we 
change the spec to disallow unquoted attribute values (and presumably, 
attribute names without attribute values), and in general disallow 
anything that is incompatible with the XML syntax.

As in, you presumably want to require that this:

   <input type=checkbox checked>

...be written as this:

   <input type="checkbox" checked="checked"/>

If so, I have to strongly object on behalf of my employer. We strongly 
desire to use the minimal syntax that HTML allows, and we don't want to be 
made non-compliant just because of that. (We are non-compliant enough as 
it is.)

While it is absolutely fine to have writing conventions and style guides, 
they should not change the actual language itself. We have no interest in 
the XML serialisation, and being forced to be compatible with it is of no 
use to us. On the other hand, we _do_ want to make our documents as small 
as possible. HTML's various syntax shortcuts are a big help here. They 
should continue to be allowed.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'