- From: Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:03:52 +0100
- To: Philip TAYLOR <chaa006@gmail.com>
- Cc: Sam Ruby <rubys@us.ibm.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Hi Philip,
On Jan 20, 2009, at 12:35 , Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> By so doing, this would ensure that when the specification
> is revised following its formal publication (as it surely
> will be), documents authored against the revised specification
> will be able to indicate this through their DOCTYPE, thereby
> ensuring that a validator is able to identify the correct version
> of the specification against which to check conformity.
As I understand it, your objection is entirely built on top of the
notion that it is better for a format to carry a version identifier,
or in fact even more strongly that it is wrong for a format not to
carry a version identifier.
I am not necessarily against the notion, but in order for your
objection to hold it needs to be substantiated.
You cite the example of validation, which I doubt applies. One always
validates against something specific — you're not going to validate
HTML against SVG or PNG — and that specificity includes the version.
What does adding a version identifier bring to the table here? If I'm
your resident QA nazi and I say that you have to validate to v5, I'm
not going to care that your document labelled itself v8.
The case for a version identifier that would be used by the user agent
is even more tenuous. If the document labels itself as v5 but contains
v6 content, should a UA that understands v6 skip the newer features? I
think that's of dubious value, and something tells me that the browser
vendors might scream a little bit.
Furthermore, experience in the wild (notably with SVG) shows that as
soon as you have two versions a non-negligible subset of all documents
start being labelled with the wrong version, meaning you now have a
lot of useless metadata on your hands.
Version identifiers don't really help for this sort of context,
they're just extra bytes.
--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/
Feel like hiring me? Go to http://robineko.com/
Received on Tuesday, 20 January 2009 12:04:31 UTC