Re: Rethinking HTML 5 (Was: Re: Semicolon after entities)

Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote:
> If the browsers are HTML5-unaware, then their
> behaviour in the presence of (new) HTML5 elements
> is unpredictable to say the least.  The probability
> that such a docment will display "correctly"
> (no matter how you choose to define "correctly")
> is vanishingly small.
> 
>> You are incorrect. The WHATWG specs as defined are (loosely speaking) a
>> superset of HTML 4 (in that they add useful features) 
> 
> Useful in the opinion of some : the usefulness of several
> of these "features" is debatable to say the least.

That's not relevant to your point. You said that adding features in a
backward compatible way is impossible, but we have clear evidence to the
contrary. Useful in your eyes or not, they are new features, and they
are backward compatible.

If you are making the claim that adding /useful/ features to the
language in a backward compatible way is impossible, give an example.

> The purpose of this forum is to encourage debate,
> and debate is pointless if there is only one point of view.

When the alternative points of view are demonstrably inferior, there's
no point in entertaining them.