- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:48:03 +0200
In www-archive@ you sasked Sam for a technical reason to remove the second example [=]: >> either apply Lachlan's change in a way that does not cause the documents to diverge > > If you want a change to the WHATWG version of the specifications, please > provide rationale that argues for that change. So far the only rationale > you have provided convincingly argues for keeping both examples. Unless > informed otherwise by the WHATWG charter members, I will assume that in > the absence of a good technical reason, the example should remain in the > WHATWG specifications. As a HTMLWG member, I cannot ask you to change an example that isn't in the HTMLWG spec. Hence I joined WHATWG mailing list in order to suggest some technical reasons why the second example should be removed or changed. First, I struggle to understand the justification for the second example. But it could seem as if the technical reason is to "mention proprietariness" [#]: > Lachlan's rationale is not the real rationale for the change: it argues > for what the WHATWG spec says (have two examples), not what the HTMLWG > spec says (not mention proprietariness). Lachlan's rationale, in contrast, was that your example did not demonstrate best practice[&]: "The ideal fallback should instead provide some kind of alternative content." So my working theory is that demonstration of "proprietariness" is the reason why you have the second example. And it might be that you consider your example a good an honest fallback text whenever proprietary plug-ins are used - who knows - there absolutely nothing in the WHATWG spec which explains why the WHATWG spec has the second example. My technical argument for why you should not have the second example is that it demonstrates the exact same thing as the first example demonstrates. Namely, both of them demonstrate how a plug-in is required in order to view _plug-in specific_ content. Another use of plug-ins - irrespective of whether the plug-in is proprietary or not - is to use them for displaying _standards compatible content_ which the user agent is lacking support for. E.g. think of the plug-ins for viewing MathML and SVG that exist. Hey, there are even Flash players (Google's SVGweb) for playing SVG, as well as different Microsoft VML solutions for playing SVG (such as AmpleSDK) in Internet Explorer. If/When Flash starts to support it, then one can also use the Flash plug-in for playing the WebM format. So, in conclusion, even the open source plugin (the first example) demonstrates "proprietariness", if we define "proprietariness" as "requiring a plug-in in order to view plug-in specific content". And that is why you should remove the second example, or provide an example that demonstrates a real difference. [=] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2010Jun/0066 [#]?http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2010Jun/0066 [&] http://www.w3.org/mid/4BC5C6A5.9090204 at lachy.id.au -- leif halvard silli
Received on Sunday, 27 June 2010 07:48:03 UTC