- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:47:16 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Cc: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Larry Masinter wrote: > > If there were multiple languages which used the same namespace, (or > multiple versions, HTML 5 and HTML 6 or whatever) then > imp.createDocument needs to choose which language it is creating a > document *in*, no matter how that version is indicated in the > serialization. DOM APIs do not have a concept of a pre-existing document. You can start from a DOMImplementation object and then create a Document without ever hitting the network or seeing any serialisation of any kind. > > ...browsers are required, for compatibility with legacy content, > > XHTML1, DOM2 HTML, and DOM2 Core, to return an element that, when > > inserted into a document, displays either an image as indicated by its > > "src" attribute, or text as indicated by its "alt" attribute. > > Legacy compatibility is one among several design goals which are often > traded off in the design process. Keeping legacy compatibility is pretty much the number one requirement and design principle underpinning the HTML5 work. I don't think it's tradable. > The existence of legacy table@summary attributes seems to have little > weight in the discussion, so the fact that there might be scripts which > would execute differently in HTML1 vs. XHTML2 or XHTML5 would need to be > evaluated using only the same criteria. In fact, the main argument against keeping <table summary=""> is that legacy content has abused it so badly that it is unusable. So the argument is effectively the same one here. > In http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Aug/0765.html you > said "HTML5 started from a clean slate". > > So what previous specifications say has not, apparently, been previously > upheld as an inviolate design principle. Indeed, the spec is written with legacy content and implementations in mind, not previous specifications. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 17 February 2009 22:47:53 UTC