- From: Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
- Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 23:33:12 -0400
- To: Olivier GENDRIN <olivier.gendrin@gmail.com>
- CC: Rene Saarsoo <nene@triin.net>, public-html@w3.org
Olivier GENDRIN wrote: > On 5/9/07, Rene Saarsoo <nene@triin.net> wrote: >> 1. If authors use their own arbitrary values with @class, >> then this is absolutely correct use of @class. >> >> 2. When authors use their own arbitrary values with @role, >> then this will NOT be the correct use of @role. It's not sufficient enough to tell people not to do something. You have to define error handling for when they break the rules. The least author-hostile way of handling arbitrary role names is to ignore them. >> Similarly authors can make up their own element <foo>, which >> might be assigned a meaning in some future spec of HTML. >> But usually there is no benefit in making up your own elements, >> and people rarely do it. Similarly do they rarely come up with new >> values for other attributes with predefined sets of values. >> Why should it be the case with @role? I don't think that's the case. While people don't commonly invent new elements, they use all sorts of arbitrary values for the |rel| attribute, especially for microformats. > I [totally] agree [Rene]: the former HTML specs never warned authors about > predefined classes. How can a previous HTML version warn about using class names defined in a later HTML spec? How do you warn against using a class name that hasn't been invented yet? > But HTML 5 spec will have to include a big red > shinny warn about misuse of role (and some other property), and will > also have to be very clear about the way it's used and the way to add > a role value to the spec. This assumes that web authors will even read the HTML5 spec. Considering how few have read the spec for HTML 4.01, that's hardly a given.
Received on Thursday, 10 May 2007 03:30:29 UTC