[Bug 8590] can empty string be a valid keyword?

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8590


Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|REOPENED                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX




--- Comment #3 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>  2010-02-14 02:46:55 ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> An empty string is a valid value, but it is not a keyword per se.

That depends on how you define keyword. I don't see why the empty string can't
be defined as a keyword.


> Suggested change:
> 
> "Note:  The empty string can be a valid value when no keyword is explicitly
> defined."

That wouldn't be enough — you'd have to go through the entire spec changing
"keyword" to "value", which would make the whole spec much less readable since
the word "value" is used all over the place. In particular, it would be very
confusing because attributes have values whether they're valid values or not,
so we'd have to define some strings as being valid values and have sentences
talking about whether a value is a valid value that maps to a state or not, and
so on. I tried making this edit but had to abandon it because it really hurt
readability.

In practice I really don't buy that this is a particularly big problem: there
are only two attributes (contenteditable and spellcheck) that take the empty
string as a keyword; together with the note in question, that means only three
places in the whole spec mention this.

EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
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Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: While it might be unusual for the empty string to be considered a
keyword, it really is preferable to the alternative.


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Received on Sunday, 14 February 2010 02:46:58 UTC