[Bug 12926] The phrase "in a Document" is not consistently used in the specification

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12926

--- Comment #5 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> 2011-08-15 05:21:59 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> I think that when you mean "the ownerDocument is an HTML document" you should
> say it exactly that way.  ;)

Yeah, but that's kinda verbose, and many of the places where this occurs are
already pretty wordy, and many of the rest don't lend themselves to that
phraseology. :-/


> For the other, perhaps make the phrase "in a document tree" (and keep the
> linkage)?

I think that's a step backwards actually, because an orphan subtree is still a
kind of "document tree" (or "document object model tree"), just not one with a
Document node at the top. So it wouldn't really clarify things IMHO.


Looking at this more closely, it seems every occurrence of referencing "HTML
Documents" to mean ownerDocuments that have the HTML flavour of the APIs has a
hyperlink, and every occurrence of "in a Document" meaning "is the descendant
of a Document object" is also hyperlinked, and the remainder aren't actually
cases of "in a document" so much as cases of the possessive form of Document
used in the context of a Node or content attribute, in which case the meaning
is that of ownerDocument.

I think a general fix is going to be impractical here.

There are still some specific cases that might be confusing (e.g. where I
haven't used quite the same consistent terminology). I suggest raising those as
individual cases (either here or in other bugs) so that we can improve them
specifically. Would that be sufficient?

If you think a general approach would be better, could you give specific
examples of how you'd fix a dozen or so of the cases you're worried about, to
show me that I'm wrong about it being impractical?

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Received on Monday, 15 August 2011 05:22:02 UTC