Level of specification detail (Was Re: Proposal to Adopt HTML5)

On 11. apr. 2007, at 04.10, Daniel Glazman wrote:

> HTML 4 is so underspecified it's a miracle it's even implemented.
> And I am one of the few here (with Murray, Chris and Dan) who were
> already here in the HTML WG for HTML 4.

OK. I guess this comes down to a difference in viewpoints.

Looks like HTML4 works much better for authors/developers than for  
implementors. Probably because implementors have been so good at  
filling in the gaps. Apart from a few annoying issues, mostly related  
to forms and media, HTML 4.01 Strict is fairly interoperable these  
days. In practice, most of the problems are related to DOM and CSS  
incompatibilities.

However, I guess this is not a place for a discussion on the quality  
of HTML4. What is more interesting, is what level of specification  
detail we should have on HTML5.

If we put HTML4.01 at one end of the scale and ECMA-262 at the other,  
where should we place HTML5?

If we go for a very high level of detail, I think it will be useful  
to have a superficial, syntactically oriented author view on the spec  
so that authors/developers can share the same source without having  
to relate to all the algorithms.

In most cases authors/developers don't need the algorithms - they  
just need to validate the syntax and then check with the browsers if  
things work/look ok.

--
Henrik

Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2007 09:29:10 UTC