Re: ISSUE-53: mediatypereg - suggest closing on 2009-09-03

On Tue, 25 Aug 2009, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> > 
> > No, by definition, every HTML5 implementation has, or must act like it 
> > has, a DOM. The DOM is used in HTML5 as a model used to describe what 
> > implementations must do even if they don't actually expose the DOM in 
> > any black-box testable way.
> 
> Hence my objection to how HTML5 has been defined in terms of DOM 
> operations, which are neither present in nor understood by the vast 
> majority of implementors of HTML.

The overwhelming majority of implementors of HTML are very familiar with 
the DOM concept. It's fundamental to CSS, scripting, and many aspects of 
HTML itself. It's more or less equivalent to the concept of an Infoset, 
which is similarly used as the basis of many XML specifications.


> I am certainly not going to change my implementations to act like they 
> manipulate a DOM just because the W3C says so (let alone the WHATwg, for 
> whom such a requirement does make sense).

I'd be surprised if your implementations did not already act like they 
manipulated a DOM. In fact, I can't really come up with something that 
couldn't be described in terms of the DOM.


> You can't have it both ways.  A language definition is applicable to all 
> generators and consumers, and can be supplemented by a behavioral spec 
> for browser conformance testing.

You keep mentioning browsers, but I don't know why. Why your fixation on 
that particular conformance class? HTML5 as written applies to far more 
than just browsers.


> The HTML4 spec is a far better definition of the language than the 
> current HTML5 draft, even after taking into consideration the errors and 
> lack of new features, solely because of the style you have chosen for 
> describing HTML in terms of DOM processing behavior.

I disagree with this world view pretty fundamentally.


> If we actually defined each element and each attribute in the way that 
> HTML4 does *and* define its operational behavior for the DOM then the 
> specification would satisfy all implementations.

I don't know what it means to "define" an element if that is not to define 
its operational behaviour.


> > > What you are saying is that I have to rely on all prior definitions 
> > > of HTML (that were not written in this insane browser-centric style) 
> > > in order to figure out the meaning of mark-up in "text/html".
> > 
> > No, I'm saying HTML5 makes all previous versions of HTML obsolete and 
> > that you never have to look at an older version of the language again.
> 
> When that happens, then the registered text/html template should be 
> changed accordingly.

Ok, I'm glad that we agree on that. If there are specific things that need 
to be defined for you to believe that that has happened, please let us 
know.


> Closing the issue (this thread) means that we have consensus that the 
> issue has been resolved or will not be resolved. I am not the one 
> suggesting it be closed at this time.

Neither am I, actually.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:27:28 UTC