Re: ISSUE-53: mediatypereg - suggest closing on 2009-09-03

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> 
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-indicated-part-of-the-document
> 
>    If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose
>    value is exactly equal to fragid (not decoded fragid), then the first
>    such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document;
>    stop the algorithm here.
> 
> > No mention of browsers is made in any of these conformance critiera.
> 
> 1) I don't have a DOM (only browsers do).

No, by definition, every HTML5 implementation has, or must act like it 
has, a DOM. The DOM is used in HTML5 as a model used to describe what 
implementations must do even if they don't actually expose the DOM in any 
black-box testable way.


> 2) I am not trying to determine "the indicated part of the document";
>    I am trying to find errors (possibly due to combining the input
>    of more than one content part) in a generated document.  In order
>    to do that I need to know the meaning of the mark-up, not the
>    behavior of a browser when traversing a DOM.

Other than the duplication issue, which is now fixed, what other errors 
would you be looking for that the current text prevents you from finding?


> 3) the above algorithm is wrong -- most of the elements in HTML that
>    have name attributes are not valid destinations for hypertext
>    links and any browser that actually follows that algorithm would
>    break existing content if the anchor name happens to be something
>    commonly used in non-anchor name attribute (like "keywords",
>    "content-type", "author", "edit", etc.).

The algorithm only looks for <a> elements.


> What you are saying is that I have to rely on all prior definitions
> of HTML (that were not written in this insane browser-centric style)
> in order to figure out the meaning of mark-up in "text/html".

No, I'm saying HTML5 makes all previous versions of HTML obsolete and that 
you never have to look at an older version of the language again.


> > In that case, I completely disagree with your world view of how 
> > specifications should work.
> 
> That much is obvious.  It does not, however, make you the ultimate 
> decider of whether an issue is valid or not, or whether the content of 
> the current draft resolves that issue.  Consensus is not found in the 
> eye of the editor.

I agree. The same applies to you, also.

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

Received on Tuesday, 25 August 2009 23:58:06 UTC