Re: Propose removing "An image in an e-mail or document intended for a specific person who is known to be able to view images" from the HTML5 spec.

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 6:00 AM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>  So say that my partner e-mails me personally an e-mail that contains a
>  diagram of our new apartment's floor layout.
>
>  What possible benefit is there to making that e-mail non-conforming?
>  (There's no way that my partner will describe the image textually, I
>  assure you.)

Well, this goes to the heart of the matter: what is the purpose of
"conformance"?

I assume it is one measure of quality, a pass/fail assessment of
whether a HTML document 'conforms' to a set of base quality criteria.
It's hugely useful when publishing to a wide audience.

I take the points earlier about forwarding of emails, and changing
needs of users over time ... I'm not going to rehash the benefits
here. Despite all that there will be plenty of times HTML is used
without any QA rigour applied, as illustrated in Hixie's example. That
seems fine to me. I think for that situation to change, it's about
better tools and education. What we set as "conformance" criteria
may/should inform that.

>  What possible benefit is there to making that e-mail non-conforming?

Why care whether emails in this (and similar) scenarios conform? I
accept that such emails won't conform. I see reducing the conformance
criteria to cater for these emails as being a detriment to the
conformance criteria, and it's application in other situations (e.g.
publishing HTML content to the entire world in a universally
accessible manner).


I had to ask all this because the example makes me wonder if my
assumption that conformance criteria are to help us with QA may be
skewed... is conformance criteria intended/needed for something else?

thanks
Ben

Received on Sunday, 13 April 2008 04:14:16 UTC