Re: Version information

On Friday 2007-04-06 19:31 -0400, Elliott Sprehn wrote:
> In hundreds/thousands of years how will they know which version of  
> HTML they need to implement to view today's content?
> 
> This is definitely a benefit of version information within the  
> markup. In the future when someone comes across a document with HTML  
> they know exactly which specification they need to implement.

You're confusing theoretical ability with practical ability.

Sure, somebody could go out and implement every single past version
based on specifications.  (Although, in reality, those
specifications won't be sufficient if the meaning of the versions is
defined by what Internet Explorer implements rather than by the
actual specification.)

But that's orders of magnitude more work than implementing a single
specification, and therefore much less likely to be done.

That it's theoretically possible is not worth much if it's too much
work for anyone to do in practice.

-David

-- 
L. David Baron                                <URL: http://dbaron.org/ >
           Technical Lead, Layout & CSS, Mozilla Corporation