[Bug 12072] Comments before <!DOCTYPE html> should be forbidden

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12072

--- Comment #4 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 2011-02-15 10:24:06 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> That it triggers quirks mode in IE is a bug in IE per HTML and I have not seen
> them raise an issue about this yet.

I note that you fall into a "between us vendors" paradigm.

That <?xml version="1.0" ?> triggers quirks ine IE6, is also a bug: it is not
founded on whether HTML4, XHTML1 or HTML5. But I have heard about no other
justification - in public-html - for the prohibition than the IE6-bug. (I have,
also, not heard that Microsoft wanted the XML declaration forbidden.)

As for comments before DOCTYPE, then I will also point to HTML5's section on
"Restrictions on content models and on attribute values" as the ultimate
justification.
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/introduction#restrictions-on-content-models-and-on-attribute-values

That sections categorizes HTML5's restrictions into, amongst others, the
following types of errors that seems relevant for evaluating whether comments
before <!DOCTYPE html> should be permitted:

  * "Errors that involve peculiarities of the parser" 
       [in truth, it is meant peculiarities in the HTML5 parser and not IE6,
       but some of those peculiarities stems from IE.]

  * "Errors that would likely result in scripts failing in hard-to-debug ways"
       [ fits well! ]

  * "Errors that waste authoring time"
       [ fits well! ]

  * "Errors that involve areas that affect authors migrating to and from XHTML"
       [ fits well! ]

  *  "Errors that indicate a mis-use of other specifications"
       [conditional comments & x-ua-compatible is misue of proprietary syntax]

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Received on Tuesday, 15 February 2011 10:24:09 UTC