Re: Precision and error handling (was URL work in HTML 5)

On 10/2/2012 5:45 AM, Michael[tm] Smith wrote:
>> > >>See Noah's point about making the author spec the main HTML5 spec.
>> >
>> >I'm not sure what it would mean to make the author spec the "main" HTML5
>> >spec.

Just to clarify, the words "main HTML5 specification" are not mine. What I 
said in my earlier email was:

------
"If I have a concern, it's that I don't see as much emphasis as I'd like 
from a social, a technical and publicity perspective on getting authors to 
follow [1], and to produce content that validates. One can imagine 
investing in educational materials and activities, publicity, or possibly 
even browser modes that create social pressure to "do it right".

"Again, this is not criticizing the decision to document and attempt to get 
compatibility on the interpretation of non-conforming as well as conforming 
content (though, FWIW, I might have preferred if the main specification 
were titled as an HTML5 User Agent Specification, since what it documents 
goes well beyond what's conforming HTML5. I think [1] is closer to an HTML5 
specification.)
------

Indeed, where I do in the second paragraph use the word "main", it's in 
reference to the larger UA specification [2].

I think that's much more nuanced than arguing that [1] should be in any 
sense the "main" spec overall. I do think we should encourage authors to 
consider [1] as >their< main specification, except perhaps in cases where 
they want to understand the behavior of browsers in recovering from 
particular "errors". I might even go along with suggesting that [1] is the 
main specification for the HTML(5) >language< and perhaps that it should be 
the basis of the media type registration.

For implementors of user agents and those who want to understand what user 
agents are doing, [2] is and should remain the "main" specification. It's 
also the nature of the beast that [1] is a nearly proper subset of [2], so 
it's natural for the editors and working group to see [2] as the base or 
main specification from a spec production point of view.

Noah



[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-author/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2012 13:42:07 UTC