Re: Who is the Intended Audience of the Markup Spec Proposal?

On Thu, 29 Jan 2009, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> 
> OK, I've revised it to this:
> 
>   This specification is intended for producers of documents
>   intended to conform to the requirements it describes, and
>   individuals wishing to establish the correctness of documents
>   with respect to the requirements it describes.

Thanks, that helps. The document online doesn't seem to have changed:

   http://www.w3.org/html/wg/markup-spec/#audience

...but that could be a www.w3.org issue.


Assuming the above audience statement, I have the following review 
comments:

* I don't think we need to include the obsolete elements, since they're 
  not needed for conformance (by definition).

* I don't think we should include <canvas>, since just saying the element 
  exists doesn't really help authors without its API.

* The comments I gave in 
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jan/0386.html
  ...apply; my preferred way of addressing those comments would be making 
  the draft non-normative and then using formalisms only where it helps, 
  instead of attempting to be comprehensive.

* There are significant authoring requirements missing, e.g. the 
  requirements on alt="" for <img> and <area>, the rules on 
  case-sensitivity for boolean attributes.

* The <audio> section refers to an "audio controls" element.

* The spec has some implementor-specific terminology like "view" and 
  "browsing context".

* The spec doesn't define for authors how relative URLs are resolved.

* I like the way all the information one needs about an element is all in 
  one place (including text/html-specific things like optional end tags). 
  I think it would be helpful to also include the element-specific APIs, 
  so that authors don't have to go to yet another reference for those.

* A number of attributes have very vague definitions: defer="" and 
  async="" on <script>, coords="" on <area>, target="" on many 
  elements, href="" on <base>, etc.

* Examples would be useful throughout.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 21:16:30 UTC