Re: Versioning and html[5]

Based on 4.01, I reckon the doc type would be:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 5.0//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/strict.dtd">

Alfonso Martínez de Lizarrondo wrote:
>
> 2007/4/12, James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>:
>>
>> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> >
>> > On Apr 12, 2007, at 19:40, Chris Wilson wrote:
>> >
>> >> I promised I would write up the picture of how we view compatibility
>> >> at Microsoft.
>> >
>> > Thank you. It helps understand the IE team point of view. However, 
>> even
>> > if we take as granted that IE needs opt-in versioning, there's no
>> > guarantee that the opt-in flags for future IE versions will match the
>> > publication of future HTML spec versions.
>>
>> I think this is a very important point. If IE7.5 and IE8 are both
>> released in the HTML5 timeframe with IE7.5 introducing a HTML5 mode
>> triggered off some assertation in the document that it is HTML5 (e.g.
>> from the doctype), would this prevent IE8 from introducing any
>> significant HTML/DOM/CSS features/bugfixes in HTML5 mode?
>
> That's exactly my question.
>
> Using the doctype to trigger some different rendering mode in the
> browser could only work if there's a certainty that browser versions
> and W3C docs would be released at the same pace, so each new version
> of the browser could use a newer doctype to improve its standards
> support. But if the time frame between newer versions of the standard
> is higher than the time it takes to release the new version of the
> browser to the market, how could you (as a browser author) say if the
> web authors specifying the latest doctype is relying on the bugs of
> your previous version or he has checked with this version of your
> browser and wants to use all the nice bugfixes that you have been
> working on?
>
>> It seems to me that development of language specifications and
>> development of browsers are orthogonal processes that should not be tied
>> together by versioning info. All future versions of the spec should be
>> developed under the premise of "don't break the web" thereby making
>> spec-version information in documents unnecessary*. If UA vendors really
>> believe that author opt-in is needed for all UA changes (and Microsoft
>> seem to be the only vendor advocating this position), the only solution
>> I can see is to force authors to specify their opt-in to the bugs and
>> features of a particular UA  using e.g. <meta name="ua-version"
>> value="IE7"> to specify IE7+ should work in IE7 mode when rendering the
>> document. It's ugly as hell but it has the one redeeming feature of
>> actually solving the stated problem which adding spec-version
>> information to documents does not.
>
> As Chis has said this has the drawback that the default rendering will
> be the buggy one in order to correctly render pages that were
> developed with the previous version of the browser in mind, and it's
> an ugly hack, but it does really address the problem at hand, and
> that's the version of the browser and its bugs implementing the HTML
> spec at hand, not the HTML itself.
>
> If the newer versions of IE are released in a timely schedule (and not
> every 6 years), then web authors will learn to follow the new
> developments and will learn that the new versions are fixing old bugs,
> so they have to keep an eye on it and use the newer features.
>
> Regards and thank you very much for your message Chris.
>
> Alfonso
>
>
>

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Received on Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:17:41 UTC