- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:27:41 +0000 (UTC)
- To: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>
- Cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Roy T. Fielding wrote: > > HTML is a declarative data format for the interoperable exchange of > hypertext. HTML was a declarative data format for the interoperable exchange of hypertext. However, it grew beyond that some years ago. Now it's also an application development and deployment framework. Going forward, I don't think it is productive for us to really split our efforts into making two specifications, one for browsers and one for everything else. I think we would find that splitting the normative conformance criteria across multiple specifications would lead to more errors in the specification. However, I have tried to structure the spec in a way that somewhat mitigates the problem you are describing. For example, most of the Web- browser-specific parts are shunted off to section 4 (unambiguously titled "Web browsers" so as to leave no doubt). Similarly, the syntax section clearly separates the syntax prose (author-aimed) from the parsing prose (implementor-aimed). The DOM section is also kept separate from the semantics section. On the long run, when the spec is more complete, I intend to go through the spec annotating what parts apply to whom, and making it possible to hide the parts you are not interested in, using alternative style sheets. However, I don't think we're really ready for that yet (it's a lot of editing work to maintain such annotations). I understand if you don't believe this is satisfactory -- I similarly don't believe it is satisfactory for HTTP to _not_ address the needs of all its target conformance classes in the same specification (for example, HTTP doesn't precisely define how to handle multiple Content-Type headers, something which is causing interoperability problems in Web browsers and, presumably, any user agent that honours those headers on arbitrary Web content). I'm not sure that it will be possible to satisfy both of us at the same time, though. If you have any suggestions on how we can address your desires while still addressing the other desires that have been put forward, I'm certainly open to suggestions. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Friday, 30 November 2007 00:27:57 UTC