Re: Proposal for developing HTML 5 materials for Web *authors*

IMHO, the exchange between Maciej and Karl  (quotes below) is the essence of
the issue.

Maciej:
"Le 21 nov. 2007 à 22:55, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
> The languages already have discrepancies. That is not in our power
> to change"

The languages have discrepancies. Parsers need to handle these
discrepancies.

Karl:
"Exactly why having one way of writing should be encouraged.
The parsing algorithm consuming has to accept different kind of
syntax. That's cool.
The authoring requirements can be stricter to lead for one way of
writing. That's cool."

I absolutely agree with Karl that one way of coding should be encouraged in
HTML materials for Web authors.

The audience for these materials is quite broad and ranges from experienced
developers to absolute novices.

An experienced developer can read the actual spec for themselves and see
that multiple ways of coding are supported. An experienced developer also
has the knowledge and background to chose the coding style HTM5/XHTML5 that
is best suited for their application.

However, consider someone new to designing web pages....
Think about yourself when learning a new skill -- what if your resource
(teacher, book, online tutorial, etc.) basically said that there's a bunch
of ways to do the skill -- choose the method you prefer -- whatever you want
-- and so on. Wouldn't you be confused?

HTML materials for Web authors should focus on one encouraged method.
With that said, it probably would be appropriate to add a note/section at
the end of the materials that something describing/explaining about backward
compatibility -- other coding styles -- referring to the actual spec for
details.

So far, an informal consensus seems to be XHTML-style syntax -- double
quotes and the use of a solidus.
I'm wondering if a survey would be appropriate on this topic.

Terry Morris
Associate Professor
William Rainey Harper College






On Nov 21, 2007 7:24 PM, Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> Le 21 nov. 2007 à 22:55, Maciej Stachowiak a écrit :
> > The languages already have discrepancies. That is not in our power
> > to change. Both classic HTML syntax and XML syntax were defined
> > years ago and there are some incompatibilities that will probably
> > never be resolved. Trying to write in the approximate common subset
> > is really hard; most people who try get it wrong, even if they are
> > experts.
>
>
> Exactly why having one way of writing should be encouraged.
> The parsing algorithm consuming has to accept different kind of
> syntax. That's cool.
> The authoring requirements can be stricter to lead for one way of
> writing. That's cool.
>
> The fact for example to say you should write
>         <p class="boo">…</p>
>         or <p class='boo'>…</p>
> does not change anything to the parsing algorithm, doesn't change
> anything to the implementation of browsers.
>
>
> --
> Karl Dubost - W3C
> http://www.w3.org/QA/
> Be Strict To Be Cool
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
Terry Morris
Web Developer Foundations: Using XHTML
htttp://www.webdevfoundations.net