Re: Profile warning erroneous.

* Grant Mackenzie wrote:
>"profile = uri [CT]
>This attribute specifies the location of one or more meta data profiles,
>separated by white space"

This is an error in the specification, the lexical space of the
attribute is defined as "uri" above, e.g. the "href" element on
some elements is defined in the same way. Other specifications
that build on the HTML 4.01 Recommendation go even further in
disallowing multiple profiles, for example

  * http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml-modularization-20010410/abstract_modules.html#s_structuremodule
  * http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-xhtml1-schema-20020902/#xhtml1-strict

Both of which clearly state that the lexical space of the attribute
is "URI" as defined in those documents. The errata documents for
these documents does not note this as an error, so I can't tell
what is actually meant here. One could argue that

  profile = uri [CT] 

  This attribute specifies the location of one or more meta data
  profiles, separated by white space. For future extensions, user agents
  should consider the value to be a list even though this specification
  only considers the first URI to be significant. Profiles are discussed
  below in the section on meta data. 

only means that only URIs are allowed but when faced with multiple
URIs separated by white-space user agents should not fail to process
it to allow future HTML versions to allow multiple URIs. I will change
Tidy as soon as the HTML Working Group publishes errata that clarifies
the situation (if an update is necessary). You can contact the W3C HTML
Working Group through www-html-editor@w3.org as noted in the Status
sections in the documents I have mentioned.

Received on Sunday, 19 September 2004 13:15:22 UTC