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

On Nov 21, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Dean Edridge wrote:
> ryan wrote:
>> On Nov 21, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Dylan Smith wrote:
>>
>>> If there were a more focused "recommended" way to code, this  
>>> might be a tad
>>> easier.
>>>
>>> Not that we should change what's allowed, or restrict rendering,  
>>> but a
>>> smaller subset that says,"Please do it this way" is something I'm  
>>> in favor
>>> of.
>>
>> It would certainly be easier for consumers/parsers if there were  
>> less variation in the languages, but as long as there will are  
>> variations in the language there are reasonable disagreements on  
>> the right "way". I don't think it's a productive use of this  
>> group's time to try and find one true way.
>>
>> If this group works on issues related to best practices, it should  
>> remain neutral– enumerate the possibilities and discuss their pros  
>> and cons, then let the reader decide for themselves.
>
> So you would like a spec that is loose enough for people to  
> interpret how they like?
> This would be a recipe for disaster.

Just because people can use HTML in different ways doesn't mean that  
there's a loose interpretation of the spec. It just means that the  
spec gives authors latitude in how they author the language.

>>> FWIW, I'm for double quotes and the use of a solidus, myself.
>>
>> That's great, but there are many situations where is is quite  
>> reasonable to omit them.
>
> I think you are missing the point.
> There doesn't need to be these differences. There doesn't need to  
> be many/diffferent situations.
> How can having differences be a good thing?

To some degree, it doesn't matter– existing implementations support  
these differences, so they won't be going away.

If we were to try and reduce these superficial differences, like  
single versus double quotes versus unquoted attributes, it comes at  
the cost of working on deeper differences, like parsing and DOM  
compatibility.

-ryan

Received on Thursday, 22 November 2007 23:08:46 UTC