Re: [whatwg/url] It's not immediately clear that "URL syntax" and "URL parser" conflict (#118)

Given that this discussion is going on under the WHATWG roof, it seems futile to argue that a spec should require any strictness or reject non conformance. If that were an option under this leadership, XHTML would still be alive (yes, I know it's not *technically* dead). 

Web browser developers have a strong business interest in accepting and parsing malformed data and rejecting effectively nothing. If one browser maker were to start rejecting malformed data, they would be at a competitive disadvantage to the browsers that hid the failure from the user. Which is why WHATWG standards go in the direction they do, and why this is ultimately a futile debate. 

To achieve any goal of strictness in standards, or of parsers requiring conformance, the standards process would need to be taken out of the hands of the web browser developers. I don't see that happening any time soon, given the successful HTML coup. 

Perhaps an achievable lesser goal could be restricting WHATWG's reach? Why is a URL spec happening under the WHATWG banner, for example? 

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Received on Tuesday, 31 January 2017 09:05:40 UTC