Re: Support Existing Content

On May 1, 2007, at 7:14 AM, Murray Maloney wrote:

>
> At 02:54 PM 5/1/2007 +0200, Terje Bless wrote:
>> A few days ago I speculated on IRC that the text, as written,  
>> exposes a “browser” point of view that many seem to find  
>> objectionable. I wonder if the different prose point of view, of  
>> essentially the same text, illustrated below would address some of  
>> those concerns.
>> [...]
>> Modified: [[[
>>     The specification of [HTML5] should not make it impossible, or
>>     inordinately difficult, for User Agents implementing [HTML5] to
>>     continue supporting existing content. Ideally, web documents and
>>     applications authored against older implementations, and which do
>>     not specifically request HTML5 processing, should be possible to
>>     process in an HTML5 implementation.
>> ]]]
>
> Sorry. This doesn't help me at all. It still speaks to user agents.
>
>         HTML 5 will be a superset of all previous incarnations of  
> HTML,
>         whether as W3C specification, user agent instantiations, or
>         instances of HTML documents on the web and on intranets.
>         (As a result, user agents which can accommodate HTML 5 should
>         be able to accommodate earlier versions of HTML.)
>
> Does that say what needs to be said?

I don't think it does, if you take "superset" strictly. Since past  
specs and past implementations are in conflict with each other, I  
believe the requirement as you have stated it is a logical  
impossibility.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 1 May 2007 19:11:05 UTC