Re: ISSUE-59: normative-language-reference FPWD

On Friday 2009-01-23 15:32 +0200, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> 2) "HTML 5: The Markup Language" makes a schema normative. Experience  
> with HTML4 shows that normative schemas freeze innovation and  
> competition in validator development, because one implementation is  
> declared normative and improvements on the implementation are considered 
> wrong. For years, HTML4 validation wasn't improved at all. Validator.nu, 
> Validome and Relaxed have now improved on things but are still seen as 
> illegitimate compared to DTD-based HTML4 validation. If the document is 
> frozen at a certain snapshot in time (as a REC would be frozen), 
> validators either couldn't improve or would have to deviate from the 
> normative schema at the risk of being perceived illegitimate. A schema is 
> code--a part of a validator implementation. WGs don't make particular 
> snapshots of C++ code normative, either.


I think the same could be said of the default style sheet (even
though it's not normative).  We've had similar problems in the past
of people complaining that browsers don't match the default style
sheet for HTML that is given in CSS2, even where that style sheet is
buggy.

I'm also curious how many of the bits included from WebKit's default
style sheet differ from those in Gecko's:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/style/html.css

-David

-- 
L. David Baron                                 http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation                       http://www.mozilla.com/

Received on Friday, 23 January 2009 17:33:52 UTC