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

ryan wrote:
>
> On Nov 21, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Dean Edridge wrote:
>> ryan wrote:
>>> On Nov 21, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Dylan Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>> If there were a more focused "recommended" way to code, this might 
>>>> be a tad
>>>> easier.
>>>>
>>>> Not that we should change what's allowed, or restrict rendering, but a
>>>> smaller subset that says,"Please do it this way" is something I'm 
>>>> in favor
>>>> of.
>>>
>>> It would certainly be easier for consumers/parsers if there were 
>>> less variation in the languages, but as long as there will are 
>>> variations in the language there are reasonable disagreements on the 
>>> right "way". I don't think it's a productive use of this group's 
>>> time to try and find one true way.
>>>
>>> If this group works on issues related to best practices, it should 
>>> remain neutral– enumerate the possibilities and discuss their pros 
>>> and cons, then let the reader decide for themselves.
>>
>> So you would like a spec that is loose enough for people to interpret 
>> how they like?
>> This would be a recipe for disaster.
>
> Just because people can use HTML in different ways doesn't mean that 
> there's a loose interpretation of the spec. It just means that the 
> spec gives authors latitude in how they author the language.

And that latitude creates unnecessary discrepancies between 
serialisations. Therefore creating interoperable issues.
I think you're missing the point again. When you look at the big 
picture, that latitude has and will cause interop problems.
The looseness of HTML has caused problems in the past. Why all of of 
sudden do people choose to ignore this?

>
>>>> FWIW, I'm for double quotes and the use of a solidus, myself.
>>>
>>> That's great, but there are many situations where is is quite 
>>> reasonable to omit them.
>>
>> I think you are missing the point.
>> There doesn't need to be these differences. There doesn't need to be 
>> many/diffferent situations.
>> How can having differences be a good thing?
>
> To some degree, it doesn't matter– existing implementations support 
> these differences, so they won't be going away.

The point is that in the future those differences could "go away", then 
it would be a lot easier for people to learn "web markup" as the 
differences between HTML, XHTML, SVG would be minimised.

>
> If we were to try and reduce these superficial differences, like 
> single versus double quotes versus unquoted attributes, it comes at 
> the cost of working on deeper differences, like parsing and DOM 
> compatibility.

With respect. What are you talking about? I'm sure that the spec could 
be changed to allow only the stricter syntax in less than half an hour 
if the editors wanted to.

>
> -ryan
>
>

Thanks,
Dean Edridge

Received on Thursday, 29 November 2007 05:37:20 UTC