- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:09:15 -0500
- To: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
- Cc: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>, "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 16:40 +0200, Julian Reschke wrote: > Dan Connolly wrote: > > Indeed, early review feedback[Fielding07] suggests I > > should cite/excerpt more of the background that I had in mind > > before sending this out for wider review. > > ... > > I think it's clear that this is a point where theory and current > practice do not match. Also, the situation might be much better if at > least some of the browsers would allow the user to opt-out of content > sniffing, as RoyF suggested multiple times. > > Documenting what User Agents do today with respect to sniffing is > certainly a good idea. What's not clear to me is why this needs to be > part of the HTML5 activity. If the browser vendors want a common spec > summarizing what their products need to do today, fine. But why does > this have to be part of HTML5? It's currently part of the HTML 5 work because it's in the text that we adopted for review on 9 May and we haven't taken it out. http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/46423D1F.5060500@w3.org;list=public-html According to my understanding of Web Architecture, it's quite a wart on the HTML spec; it belongs elsewhere. But the principle of Well-defined Behavior argues for including it. http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html#well-defined-behavior I find that principle unappealing, but I'm somewhat persuaded that it's a necessary evil, or at least that it's cost-effective. And of course, I consider the current content-type handling in the browsers a bug and I'd like to see it fixed. But it does seem like a browser that does so would lose market share (see also "Support Existing Content"), so I'm not holding my breath. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Monday, 20 August 2007 15:09:29 UTC