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

David Singer <singer@apple.com>, 2009-01-30 11:06 +0100:

> [Hixie wrote:]
>> * The spec doesn't define for authors how relative URLs are
>>   resolved.
>>  If the purpose of this draft is constrained to describing what a
>>  conformant document is, then it needs enough material in there to make
>>  sure that the reader can check that the document doesn't contain relative
>>  URLs when the base URL can't be used to resolve URLs.
> 
>  Asking a naive question:  is this actually a conformance question *at the 
>  HTML level*?

No, I suppose it would not seem to be if the conformance
definition were constrained in those terms.

>  As long as the URL conforms to the syntax requirements of 
>  URLs, then shouldn't it be treated as a black box? Unless the situations in 
>  which a base URL is unknown can be syntactically described, of course...

Would "can be syntactically described" necessarily then mean that
it'd possibly be machine-checkable, but a conformance checker?

It's certainly the case that the HTML5 draft doesn't confine its
definition of what a conformant document is to only what's
machine-checkable. I think that's a good thing, and I think
anything else that sets out to describe what a conformant document
is should also not confine itself to only what's machine
checkable. On the fact of it at least, it does seem to me that
"document doesn't contain relative URLs when the base URL can't be
used to resolve URLs" seems like a constraint that ought to be
described in my draft.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 10:30:17 UTC