Re: Patch for Acid3 test 77 (SVGTextContentElement errata)

On Jul 14, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Erik Dahlström wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:04:47 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak  
> <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jul 14, 2008, at 12:28 AM, Erik Dahlström wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:01:36 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> ...
>>> The webkit team is represented on the SVG WG (by Apple), and it
>>> would have been great if the comments would have been heard there
>>> when this errata was discussed.
>>
>> If you'd like specific errata reviewed on behalf of Apple or the
>> WebKit project in the future, please let me know. But we probably
>> won't be able to give detailed immediate review of every erratum
>> without being specifically asked.
>
> Agendas are sent out on a regular basis to the public-svg-wg list,  
> and anything being an errata discussion is usually marked as such.  
> It would be my suggestion to read the related email/issues/actions  
> and post comments to the list, and if possible, attending the telcon  
> that discusses the errata item(s).

I'm not interested enough in most of the errata to go out of my way to  
comment (most of these things seem ok either way), but I am happy to  
provide input if specifically asked. This one only came to my  
attention because of the Acid3 tie-in, and my only original  
observation was that it didn't seem to do what Ian wanted.

>
>> As for the substance of the change, it seems very strange to me that
>> whether the method throws depends on which range endpoint is out of
>> bounds. It would make more sense to either always clamp to the text
>> node's available range (returning 0 if you end up outside the range
>> entirely), or always throw when either endpoint is out of bounds, but
>> the current mix makes for a strange programming model.
>
> Fair enough, and your preference is for which of these models?

Personally I would prefer the clamping model, because on the Web at  
least soft failure (i.e. without raising exceptions) tends to makes  
programs more robust against unexpected variance of implementation or  
operating conditions. However, I think a fair argument could also be  
made for throwing regardless of which endpoint is out of bounds. I do  
not feel particularly strongly about this issue either way, so long as  
it is clearly specified.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 10:22:30 UTC