- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:39:00 +0100
- To: Dean Edridge <dean@55.co.nz>
- CC: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>, "public-html@w3.org Tracking WG" <public-html@w3.org>, Roger Johansson <roger@456bereastreet.com>
Dean Edridge wrote: > Of course my suggestions are intended to benefit the whole world. I > wouldn't just come up with an idea that solely suited me. > > My idea is based on increasing interoperability between serialisations, > reducing inconsistencies between documents that will have been produced > by differrent people and different tools/machines. The problem with focussing on an issue as minor as whether or not attributes should be quoted is that everyone has their own opinion on the matter, yet no solid, technical reasoning that justifies why one technique applies equally to everyone in all cases. It is certainly true that some people do benefit from always quoting attribute values, perhaps because they feel it makes the coding style more consistent or because they author for both HTML and XHTML, and minimising the differences between the two is convenient and can improve work flow. However, those reasons do not apply to everyone and there is no reason to force the issue. Some people prefer to omit the attributes because of the convenience of typing less. In my opinion, the authoring spec should clearly and concisely explain that both quoting and not quoting attributes is conforming, detail the pros and cons of each method and encourage authors to choose a consistent approach that works for them in their environment. I'm am absolutely opposed to subsetting the conforming syntax for HTML5 to always require quoted attributes, or vice versa. This also applies to related issues like whether or not to include the trailing slash in void elements; whether or not to include optional start and end tags; and whether or not to minimise boolean attributes. -- Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software http://lachy.id.au/ http://www.opera.com/
Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 18:39:39 UTC