Working Group Decision on ISSUE-100 srcdoc

Here is the decision.  The chairs made an effort to explicitly address 
all arguments presented in the Change Proposals on this topic in 
addition to arguments posted as objections in the poll.

*** Question before the Working Group ***

The current HTML5 draft includes a srcdoc attribute on the iframe 
element which is intended to  provide the content of the page that the 
nested browsing context is to contain.  Some working group members have 
questioned whether this use case needs to be satisfied.

This scope of this decision merely covers whether or not this 
functionality is required.  A section below details what arguments were 
not considered, a number of which were not considered due to scope reasons.

== Uncontested observations:

* This attribute doesn't solve every security problem that might exist
* Embedding markup in attributes is generally considered less than
   ideal.
* This feature will need to be implemented before it can be used

None of these were decisive.  There were people who supported either of 
these proposals even after taking these facts into consideration.

== Summary of Arguments:

Once we put aside the uncontested observations, what is left is the use 
cases.

For Retention: "There are multiple uses for inserting user-provided 
content into a page, with notable examples being blog comments, social 
network updates, and wiki pages."

For Removal: the author of the original change proposal contacts one 
author of one tool for one of these use cases.  This tool author 
believes that he has an effective alternative for his needs, and from 
that the change proposal author concludes that "no one from the 
weblogging community has asked for this".

Even if we accept that this use case does not benefit this one author, 
we find the strongest argument is that there are valid use cases for 
this function.  The fact that two browser vendors have indicated that 
they intend to implement this function supports this case.

*** Decision of the Working Group ***

Therefore, the HTML Working Group hereby adopts the Change Proposal to 
retain the srcdoc attribute in the language. Of the two Change Proposals 
before us, this one has drawn the weaker objections.

Bug 8818 is to be closed and marked as WGDecision.

== Next Steps ==

Since the prevailing Change Proposal does not call for a spec change, no
further actions are required.

== Appealing this Decision ==

If anyone strongly disagrees with the content of the decision and would 
like to raise a Formal Objection, they may do so at this time. Formal 
Objections are reviewed by the Director in consultation with the Team. 
Ordinarily, Formal Objections are only reviewed as part of a transition 
request.

== Revisiting this Issue ==

This issue can be reopened if new information come up. Examples of 
possible relevant new information include:

     * browser implementers indicating that they will not implement this
     * security issues introduced by this attribute

Additionally, as the markup syntax was not considered to be within scope 
of this issue, concrete suggestions for alternate syntaxes, in the form 
of bug reports, continue to be welcome.

== Arguments not considered ==

a) Alternate mechanisms, such as data URIs

    No concrete proposal has been put forward

b) The manner in which this attribute is to be documented

    That is the subject of ISSUE-103

c) Increases divergence with the WHATWG spec

    No specific evidence was provided that this would increase
    divergence.  There are cases where the WHATWG spec diverges from the
    W3C specification, and there are cases where bug reports and issues
    filed against the W3C specification have resulted in improvements to
    the WHATWG specification.

Received on Wednesday, 13 October 2010 10:23:41 UTC