Re: The argument for |bugmode| (was Re: If we have versioning, it should be in an attribute, not the doctype)

On Apr 18, 2007, at 19:33, Chris Wilson wrote:

> I want to explicitly state - I neither asked for nor want the HTML  
> WG to specify a "bugmode" attribute in HTML.

Would you like a conformance checker to mark whatever IE-version  
switch you are going to use as non-conforming? (You have very clearly  
stated the intention to have an opt-in switch in future IE versions.)

If you would like the switch to be marked non-conforming, do you  
expect Web designers to accept it?

If you would not like the switch to be marked non-conforming, I see  
three options:
  1) Catering for it in the spec.
  2) Tying switching to a syntactic feature that officially isn't an  
IE bug mode switch.
  3) Putting the switch into comments or baking it into the choice of  
syntactic sugar to cloak it from conformance checkers.

#2 and #3 are bad for intermediate tool vendors who build on XML  
toolchains.

My reading of your previous messages is that you are arguing for #2.  
People arguing for conditional comments are arguing for #3. I'd  
prefer not to have a switch at all, but if it is going to happen  
anyway, I'd prefer option #1.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:16:17 UTC