Re: several messages about content sniffing in HTML

On Sat, 1 Mar 2008, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> > ... It's only necessary because the HTTP working group refuses to act 
> > in a responsible manner and actually specify how to write an 
> > interoperable user agent that is both compatible with the Web and 
> > handles invalid content. If HTTP defined how to do this, we wouldn't 
> > be stuck with defining it ourselves. ...
> 
> It would be interesting to know how many pages actually have that 
> problem; chat on IRC indicates it is below 1/1000.
> 
> It seems to me you're doing overspecification for edge cases here.

We want full specification of all edge cases, yes. That's what any 
complete specification consists of -- a full specification of all cases, 
edge case or not.

The Web has suffered enough at the hand of incomplete specifications, we 
have to learn from our past mistakes.

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

Received on Saturday, 1 March 2008 07:17:59 UTC