Re: <q> and commas

2008/10/30 Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) <P.Taylor@rhul.ac.uk>
>
> Sam Kuper wrote:
>
>> Actually, the HTML 4.01 spec is slightly mealy-mouthed on this point. See
>> s.19.1 [1]:
>
> [...]
>>
>> My reading of this, especially the last sentence I've quoted above, is
>> that while automated "validators" detect "a large set of errors that make
>> documents invalid", they cannot catch all such errors. Since avoiding all
>> such errors seems to be synonymous with conforming to the HTML 4
>> specification, this appears to imply that the sample document you presented
>> is, indeed, invalid.
>>
>
> OK, here I respectfully disagree.  It clashes with a "should not",
> not with a "must not", and therefore if that is the only deviation
> from the specification the document remains valid.


Valid but poorly-conforming, right? Well, I certainly think the HTML 4 spec
is vague enough that that's a fair reading. I hope the HTML 5 spec in its
final form avoids this kind of vagueness altogether, and defines "validity"
and "conformance" explicitly enough that (within the scope of HTML 5 at
least) the matter will no longer be up for discussion.

My original point was that implementing heuristic suppression of quotation
marks generated from <q> isn't justified from a backwards-compatibility
standpoint in cases where quotation marks are written immediately within <q>
because, as I put it, such mark-up is "invalid". Even if (and you may be
right about this - I'm not sure) such mark-up is not "invalid" but merely
not in conformance with the recommendations of the spec, I think my point
still stands: for HTML 5 to *support* HTML 4.x document authors'
contraventions of the HTML 4.x specifications' recommendations, would *not*
represent backwards compatibility.

Regards,

Sam