[Bug 28832] comments that can survive in minified files

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=28832

Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> changed:

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

--- Comment #3 from Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> ---
(In reply to Nick Levinson from comment #2)
> Yes, it is an HTML issue, because the format for comments is in HTML5
> section 8.1.6. Google recommended that I speed page loading of my site by
> minifying my HTML and CSS files

So you're voluntarily choosing to remove HTML comments from your own HTML files
because Google recommended it? If the HTML language were to define some other
type of comment format, I see no reason why the creators of whatever Google
guidelines you're looking wouldn't then just recommend that you remove those
too. What would prevent them from recommending that? And if they did, would you
then follow that recommendation too? Where would it stop?

> Minification generally consists of removing whitespace, comments, and other
> things not necessary for user agents' interpretation of coding. User agents
> wouldn't do minification. Some other apps would do it.

So the solution to the root problem you seem to be trying to work around here
is really simple: Don't remove comments from your HTML files if you want your
HTML files to have comments. Nobody is forcing you to. You have a choice.

If you're using some tool that automatically removes HTML comments as part of
some kind of  HTML "minification" process, then just quit using that tool.

The HTML spec says nothing about "minification" and defines nothing about what
is supposed to happen to HTML comments during "minification". Instead it
defines a single mechanism for marking up comments. That's it. So there is no
value in adding a redundant markup feature to the HTML language to represent
something the language already defines. And there is pretty much zero chance of
such of a redundant other comment-markup feature ever getting added to HTML.

I can't prevent you from re-opening this bug here but all I can say is that if
you do, I think the only thing that's likely to happen is that it's just going
to sit open indefinitely with nobody taking any action on it.

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Received on Friday, 26 June 2015 12:35:25 UTC