<address> [was: Re: HTML Action Item 54 - ...draft text for HTML 5 spec to require producers/authors to include @alt on img elements.]

James Graham wrote:
> I would argue that requiring knowledge of author intent does not prevent a
> conformance requirement being useful; such requirements can still 
> increase the fraction of authors who do something well; this is the 
> social engineering aspect of conformance requirements that I have 
> previously discussed [2]. It does prevent services with no access to 
> out-of-band information handing out badges to proclaim conformance, but 
> it's not clear to me what the value of such badges is supposed to be, 
> especially in the case where the conformance requirements have been 
> watered down to meet the the capabilities of badge-providers.

I forgot to add that, in the specific case of <address> I think the conformance 
requirement in the current spec is over restrictive as I can't imagine enough 
authors will follow it that a tool could automatically pick contact information 
out of an <address> element. Therefore I think this use case is too weak to 
merit its own element and we should broaden the range of content that is 
conforming for <address>.

It is possible I have said this before and got some convincing response that I 
have nevertheless forgotten. If so, feel free to ignore me :)


-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2008 17:33:44 UTC