Re: Document conformance and non-empty <script src>

On Thu, 15 May 2008 00:06:31 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

>> Things authors put in <script src> deliberatly:
>>
>>  A: An empty comment, ";", "var dummy=0;", etc, as a way to prevent  
>> their
>>     server side XSLT to emit "<script ... />" (though most empty  
>> comments
>>     are likely just cargo cult). Banning this means that authors have to
>>     change their backend in order to move to HTML5, which seems to be an
>>     unnecessary blocker for adoption.
>>
>>  B: A comment containing a description of the script and/or copyright
>>     information. Moving this comment to outside the script element seems
>>     pointless and has less chance of surviving copy-paste, and I'd  
>> imagine
>>     authors would get stumped when the comment says "This notice MUST  
>> stay
>>     intact for legal use".
>>
>>  C: Empty function declarations with the same names as the functions
>>     declared in the external script. Personally I find this slightly
>>     confusing and would rather put them in a comment.
>
> All of the above can use a comment, which is allowed (in the XML variant,
> at least -- you can't put a comment in the text/html variant).

I didn't mean comment as in a DOM Comment node, but rather as in a  
javascript comment.


> For A, would a single space work?

I guess that depends on whether there's whitespace mangling down the  
toolchain.


> I suppose we could allow /* ... */, but that seems oddly specific...

The spec could allow any text and conformance checkers could compete on  
being useful. Or the spec can be oddly specific. :-) Note though that //  
and <!-- are also javascript comments.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software