- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 15:44:07 -0700
- To: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>
- Cc: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, tina@greytower.net, www-html@w3.org, public-html@w3.org
On May 2, 2007, at 2:52 PM, Jim Jewett wrote: > On 5/1/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote: >> On May 1, 2007, at 11:00 AM, Shane McCarron wrote: >> > Lachlan Hunt wrote: >> >> This seems to be the source of contention in the current debate. >> >> For the spec to be implementable, it needs to define conformance >> >> requirements for UAs, including error handling and how to handle >> >> both existing and future content. > >> > Perhaps if those implementation conformance constraints were >> > defined in a separate specification, it would help to clearly >> > divide the issue? > >> ... it is essential that the two match up when >> they overlap. > > Would it resolve some of the acrimony if the document were split into > two clearly marked specifications > > (1) HTML 5.0 Language Specification > (2) HTML 5.0 User Agent Error Processing Specification > > (Whether to make them two separate documents, or just two different > classes to be used on adjacent sections -- I suppose would depend on > how tightly the two specifications were interwoven.) > > The language could stay pure. It would be clear (at least to people > who cared) which parts of the language were "correct", and which were > merely "historical notes documented to aid browser implementors". I think this would be a lot of extra work. Maybe you could skim the current document to see if you find the distinction between document requirements and UA requirements sufficiently clear as written. I don't think "purity" is a valid reason to do a lot of extra work, if the resulting conformance requirements for documents and UAs would be identical. > Someone who wanted to write a validator (or a demo browser) could > speed development by explicitly supporting only correct markup, > instead of picking a hodge-podge of features at random. I don't think Henri had any problem distinguishing UA conformance requirements from document conformance requirements in his work on an HTML5 conformance checker. I don't think there's a lot of value to optimizing the spec for demo browsers that never intend to become full browsers supporting all content. Surely we care more about helping current and future full-fledged browsers than demo browsers, since that is what will assure continuing competitiveness of the browser marketplace. Regards, Maciej
Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 22:45:13 UTC