Re: head@profile: another dropped attribute

On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:23, Rob Sayre wrote:

> On 2/5/09 12:13 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:04, Rob Sayre wrote:
>>
>>> Leaving it in is no worse than the status quo, it would be hard to  
>>> claim that it's been a source of incompatibilities, and other  
>>> specs depend on it.
>>>
>>> Hardly seems worth debating, to be honest.
>>
>> Should also <font> be conforming in HTML5?
>
> Yes, to the extent that it is interoperable. IMHO. I have no idea  
> which attribute values for the element are recognized by each major  
> implementation, for example.

I have previously mildly advocated for making <font color='...'>  
conforming. It is the thing that has pre-existing GUI authoring tool  
support for doing color-based emphasis. (Making a class for <strong>  
and defining a CSS rule is much harder for authors who want to make  
some words red and be done with it.) I haven't dared to suggest making  
the face and size attributes conforming, and I think CSS, <small> and  
<big> are more appropriate for the use cases addressed by the face and  
size attributes.

Anyway my point here is that <font color> is interoperable in  
browsers, actually has an effect (unlike profile usually), has tool  
support and is less crufty than the realistic GUI tool alternative  
(<span style="color: ...;">) but yet is has been made non-conforming  
for largely ideological reasons (<span style="color: ...;"> is no more  
accessible than <font color='...'>). If the WG wishes to develop a  
general policy for assessing the adoption of HTML 4.01 features into  
HTML5, I think applying the policy to <font color='...'> is a good test.

> Of course, leaving this unspecified is no worse than the status quo.

That's a pretty low bar.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Thursday, 5 February 2009 09:19:02 UTC