- From: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:33:25 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "'Jonas Sicking'" <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Cc: "'Simon Pieters'" <simonp@opera.com>, "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>, <public-html@w3.org>
Jonas Sicking wrote: > >> > >> Additionally, I given how easy it is to get unexpected results, I > >> think we should strongly discourage authors from not escaping > >> ampersands. And the best tool that we have for doing that is by making > >> unescaped ampersands non-conformant. > >> > >> / Jonas > > > > Good Luck with that Jonas. They will never use non-conformance* as a tool > > to modify author behavior, as they are completely unwilling to attach > > critical fail to non-conformance, and without that, what other penalty > > would you propose? A "tsk tsk" from Henri's validator? Ouch, that > > hurts... > > Is there a purpose to the above other than just trying to be > inflammatory? Are you requesting any changes to the spec? > > / Jonas Jonas, I pose a serious question: what is the real benefit of making unescaped ampersands non-conformant? (Of making anything "non-conformant"?) What, in practical terms, will it achieve - how will it modify author behavior? I have asked this question numerous times surrounding numerous different elements and proposals, and the continued response I get is.... <chirping crickets /> If there is not a significant penalty attached to non-conformant code, why bother? I am not trying to be antagonistic here, I truly want to know the answer. How does non-conformance "...strongly discourage authors from not escaping ampersands...", given that the browsers will simply apply error recovery to the non-conformant code and render as desired, but not author delivered? And so, what behavior modification principle is in effect with "non-conformance"? You don't get to display a badge on your website that says "HTML5 Conformant"? Unless I'm missing something here, that appears to be it. Given that the majority of developers today don't bother with validation or valid code anyway I'm not seeing any real benefit to your suggestion in the real world that HTML5 is allegedly being written for. If the browsers are doing error recovery (as opposed to critical fail) why should the author bother to correct their mistakes - they simply push it along the line and let somebody else deal with it - in this case the browser. And please, with zero sarcasm or antagonism, if I am wrong please point me to the place in the specification that corrects my impression. JF
Received on Tuesday, 2 June 2009 19:34:04 UTC