Re: Counter change-proposal for ISSUE-4 (html-versioning) (vs. ISSUE-30 longdesc)

On Feb 27, 2010, at 6:51 , Jonas Sicking wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com> wrote:
>> In http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0750.html,
>> David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote, in a discussion of ISSUE-30
>> longdesc, with respect to accessibility laws, regulations and
>> organizational policies which might refer to a particular HTML feature:
>> 
>>> "More to the point, they [laws, regulations and policies] were
>>> written with a particular version of HTML in mind and existence,
>>> whether or not they remembered to say so.  The laws in question,
>>> as I understand, were never intended to be prescriptive of what
>>> standards-writers wrote, merely descriptive of what was in the
>>> said standards (the laws are prescriptive in other respects,
>>> of course).
>> 
>>> When the HTML version changes, should they wish to adopt it
>>> and prescribe how to use it, they are at liberty to do so."
>> 
>> This raises the following question:
>> 
>> What is a HTML version? Is there any way to distinguish one HTML
>> version from another?
> 
> HTML 3 is defined here
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32.html
> HTML 4 is defined here
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
> HTML 5 drafts are here
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/
> 
> You can distinguish them by the title of the document :)

That was my position, yes.  The regulations implicitly say "In the HTML specification which we had when we wrote this document...we identify the following..." and so on, whether they say it explicitly or not.

I take no position on whether this means that the documents in question have to have intrinsic typing within them.

> 
>> What does "When the HTML version changes" mean ?
> 
> If I understand what David is trying to say, I would have phrased it
> as "When a new version of HTML is released".

Yes.


David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 10:59:18 UTC