Re: HTML is a declarative mark-up language

Anne van Kesteren 2009-01-29 12.40:
> On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:53:51 +0100, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> 
> wrote:
>> What you say implies that those two pages must always be 100% in line 
>> with the rest of the spec - as a mirror, at each and every moment. 
>> Which would be nice of course if they were. But in fact, it is enough 
>> that they are 100% correct and updated only when the document is 
>> supposed to be ready ... at Last Call or something.
> 
> What I'm saying is that those things take time to write and maintain.

What I say is that it is perhaps not smart to think of it as only 
something that you add on, once the rest is finished.

>> Also, we do not need to consider those two pages only "reference" - 
>> they can be considered part of the spec. And as such, the could 
>> function also as a map of where we are headerd.
>>
>> Anyway, taking the name attribute of the anchor element: clicking the 
>> link of for that attribute inside the attributes page could  - until 
>> that section was written - lead to a placeholder  of some sort.
> 
> But there will be no section on the name attribute for the a element. It 
> is gone.

Whether it - when HTML 5 reaches a "ready" status - is gone, 
remains to be seen. Have all arguments beeen considered? Does for 
instance Wikipedia.org use the "name" attribute only because it is 
useless for them and their users that they do so? Yes, their HTML 
format is XHTML 1 transitional. But I guess HTML 5 poses itself as 
the "right thing" for anyone that serves XHTML as text/html.

But apart from that, *even if* it is dropped, there should be some 
place in HTML 5 which tells me what it talks about when it - 
suddenly - talks about the "name" attribute of the "a" element - 
and it sounded to me as if Ian wanted to add more stuff about both 
that and e.g. target. And thenafter, we could debate whether 
"name" sould be found on the "attributes" list for HTML 5 - marked 
as "dropped", or in a separate "dropped attributes" list.

Since HTML 5 doesn't have 3 different DTD alternatives, 
deprecating and dropping should be the same thing in HTML 5. 
Hence, we do not need to fear that just because it is mentioned in 
HTML 5, it is considered part of HTML 5.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 19:53:46 UTC