- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 09:52:56 +0200
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Cc: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Feb 5, 2009, at 02:20, Larry Masinter wrote: > I think the two issues depend to some extent on the following > general policy questions: [...] > • In particular, whether attributes and features that are present > in HTML4, widely documented and references, should have a higher bar > against removal, even if they are not widely used, as long as they > are not harmful. I guess first we need an understanding of what is harmful. What's your definition of harmful? Is wasting a lot of author time (on aggregate globally during the lifetime of HTML5) with syntax of little to no use harmful? Is creating an attractive nuisance[1] that can lead to such waste harmful? Is failure to remove an attractive nuisance that can lead to such waste harmful? Is asking authors to spend time on removing pre-existing no-op syntax harmful? Is adding GUI clutter to Dreamweaver harmful? Is failure to remove pre-existing GUI clutter from Dreamweaver harmful? > Rather, it seems preferable from a tool and validity point of view > to leaving them in the specification as conforming, but marking > them as deprecated; “deprecated” in the sense of “could be dropped > in the future”, possibly designating them as SHOULD NOT be used in > content, SHOULD BE ignored by browsers. HTML 4.01 had three levels of markup feature conformance from current to old: Conforming (in HTML 4.01 Strict, e.g. <p>) Deprecated (in HTML 4.01 Transitional, e.g. <font>) Obsolete (previously in HTML but not in any flavor of HTML 4.01, e.g. <xmp>) Putting things in the "deprecated" class is a cop-out. In the case of HTML 4.01, it is a wishful class of non-conformance: authors still use those features as Transitional and authoring tool vendors spent time and UI real estate on the features--and the transition has been going for about a decade. Also, having a "deprecated" class of conformance makes it too easy for the definers of language to be too idealistic with the non-deprecated part. That is, if deprecation is considered to be available, oft-used but ideologically impure features (such as the target attribute) may end up as deprecated too easily leading to a situation where the deprecated version of the language becomes the de facto conformance target of authors. By deliberate policy (not formulated by this WG), HTML 5 has no deprecated features. Recently, though, HTML 5 has gained a list of of downplayed errors[2] which, in my opinion, is partly similarly wishful as deprecation was in HTML 4.01. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance [2] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#conformance-checkers-0 -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Thursday, 5 February 2009 07:53:38 UTC