Re: What is a "state"?

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Henrik Dvergsdal wrote:
> On 13 Jun 2007, at 03:16, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> > The default state is the state you are in when you haven't been told 
> > to be in another state, or when you have been told to be in an 
> > unrecognised state.
> 
> Yes, I think I can agree with that. But if you have specified a missing 
> value state, unsetting the attribute amounts to telling it to be in a 
> that state.

When you haven't set the attribute, you haven't told it to be in a state. 
You haven't said anything!


> Likewise, if you have specified an illegal value state, setting the 
> attribute to a value that is a member of the corresponding illegal value 
> set, amounts to telling it to be in that state.

No, it amounts to setting it to a state that doesn't exist (e.g. one from 
a future version).

If the attribute takes values "on" and "off" and you set it to "blue" you 
haven't told it to be off. It _defaults_ to off, but only because it 
doesn't know what else to do with "blue".


> If you haven't specified a missing value state, however, unsetting the 
> attribute will lead to a situation where the state is undefined. That's 
> when you (hypothetically) would bring in a default state.

...at which point, by your argument, you would have specified a missing 
value state, and it would no longer be a default. That line of argument 
seems weak to me.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2007 19:29:01 UTC