- From: Philip TAYLOR <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:17:11 +0000
- To: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
- CC: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> [PT] Equally, I have no wish to have to dig in a document as complex
>> as the current draft specification : it may well contain
>> exactly the information that I need, but it contains
>> so much more that I may well have great difficulty
>> in getting an answer to my own, purely markup, question.
>
> If this assumption is true, it might help to point out where it went
> wrong so it can be addressed. I'm sure the intent is to make this
> information easily accessible.
I agree that that was the intention. But the reality
is otherwise, as many have frequently pointed out. The
document sets out to cater for all possible constituencies,
rather than addressing each constituency separately.
The author of HTML (a professional webmaster) does not
need to know what a browser is expected to do if he
produces invalid markup; he needs to know only how
to produce valid markup in the first place. And (if
the current draft specification can reasonably regarded
as representing consensus on this highly sensitive issue),
a browser writer does not need to know what is (or is
not) valid HTML; he needs only to know how to process
an arbitrary sequence of characters ("tag soup") that
purports to be HTML.
Philip TAYLOR
Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 13:17:45 UTC