RE: Is "breaking the Web" with HTML 5 a non issue?

Thanks!

This seems like less than ideal behavior. What is the point of DOCTYPE if
UAs don't make any kind of decisions based upon it?

I think this might be a very good time, then, to propose that the HTML 5
spec state clearly that text/html content should be parsed as HTML 4 unless
there is a valid HTML 5 DOCTYPE within the document (whatever the HTML 5
DOCTYPE is, it seems to change or be under debate). I believe that to free
ourselves of the concerns of backwards compatability, as well as not
accidentally break any pages, would be more than worth it, especially since
all you would be asking UAs to do is have a simple two-way toggle at the
beginning of their parse routines.

Thoughts? Am I off my rocker?

J.Ja

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Sidwell [mailto:w3c@andrewsidwell.co.uk]
> Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 11:34 AM
> To: Justin James
> Cc: public-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Is "breaking the Web" with HTML 5 a non issue?
> 
> Justin James wrote:
> > I was reading over the discussion around the <applet> element, and I
> asked
> > myself, "what difference does it make if we break the applet tag?
> After all,
> > a page has to be deliberately changed in order to claim that it is
> HTML 5
> > (via DOCTYPE), so it is not like we are actually breaking any
> existing
> > content."
> 
> HTML 5 user-agents will handle all text/html content as HTML 5 says,
> regardless of whether it's marked as such or not.  As a result,
> breaking
> existing content is a massive concern.
> 
> a.

Received on Monday, 22 September 2008 15:58:10 UTC