Re: Who is the Intended Audience of the Markup Spec Proposal?

At 19:30  +0900 30/01/09, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
>David Singer <singer@apple.com>, 2009-01-30 11:06 +0100:
>
>>  [Hixie wrote:]
>>>  * The spec doesn't define for authors how relative URLs are
>>>    resolved.
>>>   If the purpose of this draft is constrained to describing what a
>>>   conformant document is, then it needs enough material in there to make
>>>   sure that the reader can check that the document doesn't contain relative
>>>   URLs when the base URL can't be used to resolve URLs.
>>
>>   Asking a naive question:  is this actually a conformance question *at the
>>   HTML level*?
>
>No, I suppose it would not seem to be if the conformance
>definition were constrained in those terms.
>
>>   As long as the URL conforms to the syntax requirements of
>>   URLs, then shouldn't it be treated as a black box? Unless the situations in
>>   which a base URL is unknown can be syntactically described, of course...
>
>Would "can be syntactically described" necessarily then mean that
>it'd possibly be machine-checkable, but a conformance checker?
>
>It's certainly the case that the HTML5 draft doesn't confine its
>definition of what a conformant document is to only what's
>machine-checkable. I think that's a good thing, and I think
>anything else that sets out to describe what a conformant document
>is should also not confine itself to only what's machine
>checkable. On the fact of it at least, it does seem to me that
>"document doesn't contain relative URLs when the base URL can't be
>used to resolve URLs" seems like a constraint that ought to be
>described in my draft.

I appreciate it's more than a syntax question;  that's what makes it 
perhaps not so naive.  I was pondering the whole question "what if 
the URL is not capable of being de-referenced?"  (e.g. 
http://deliberately.unknown.host.xw/).  Then there is the question of 
URLs with unknown or inappropriate methods...clearly <something 
src="mailto:someone@w3.org" /> is pretty odd, and one would be 
tempted to say that the URL here must be a form that delivers 
content.  But then is <something src="daveprotocol:random.content" /> 
conforming or not, if you don't know what daveprotocol does...?
-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 10:40:04 UTC