- From: Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:14:12 -0400
- To: Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org>
- CC: W3C TAG <www-tag@w3.org>
On 9/25/2012 9:27 AM, Robin Berjon wrote: > > I believe that the idea is that once the rules that describe processing as > it happens are written down, you write test suites that can prove > conformance. This does tend to have a strong effect, particularly if > coupled with rules about processing erroneous input. Well, half of the HTML5 spec is devoted to documenting cases where individual browsers were liberal, the conformance suites (like the W3C validator) were not used by producers, the invalid data on the wire became commonplace, and now the specification is complicated by the need to support the union of all these deviations. > Well-defined error handling that produces something predictable (rather > than blow up) is actually a modern and more pragmatic reformulation of > Postel, IMHO. My concern is not with well-defined error handling; it's with not putting equal emphasis on inducing producers to cleanup their act too. Noah
Received on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 14:19:11 UTC