[editorial?] ambiguous English logic in "new attributes" SHOULD clause

• From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>
• Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:27:15 -0400
• To: www-html-editor@w3.org
• Message-Id: <2C152C3F-F5CF-431B-9490-1DA75717EE93@IEEE.org>

** proposed change

*from

<quote
cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/curie/#s_syntax">

Language designers SHOULD only use CURIEs (or safe_curies) as the  
datatype of new attributes in their markup language, since using them  
in values where historically an attribute has taken a URI as its  
datatype could break backward compatibility.

</quote>

* to

Language designers SHOULD use CURIEs (or safe_curies) as the datatype  
for new attributes only.  Using them in values where historically an  
attribute has taken a URI as its datatype could break backward  
compatibility.

** discussion

I think that the 'to' version says what you want, and says it more  
clearly.  I can't swear that the 'from' version is ambiguous -- there  
may be grammarians who would parse it unambiguously.  But since I  
misunderstood the intent to be "all new attributes should use CURIEs"  
on the first pass and only understood what you intended after  
finishing the sentence, be forewarned that others might read it wrong.

Al
/self

Received on Monday, 29 September 2008 00:27:54 UTC