Re: <font color="blue"> (was ISSUE-32)

On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Sam Ruby<rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
>  The summary DOM attribute must reflect the summary content attribute.
>
> As far as I can tell, that particular requirement is both redundant and
> not in dispute.  I say redundant in that HTML5 specifies that all
> unrecognized attributes, "vestigial" or otherwise, are to be placed in
> the DOM.  And I know of no existing browsers or plans to do otherwise.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. The "DOM attribute" is

myTableElement.summary

whereas the "content attribute" is

myTableElement.getAttribute("summary")

So the above statement is in fact not redundant. It describes what
.summary should return.

I don't think this makes a practical difference for the rest of your
mail though.

>  http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#editors
>
>  Authoring tools and markup generators must generate conforming
>  documents. Conformance criteria that apply to authors also apply to
>  authoring tools, where appropriate.
>
> So... does this apply to APIs such as the following:
>
>  https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/table
>
> If so, does Mozilla have plans to remove the summary attribute from this
> page in order to become conformant with HTML5?  I doubt that would be
> popular.  If not, why does Mozilla get to keep this in but other tools
> must take it out?

I definitely don't think that we would encourage a feature that has
been deprecated, unless there is a very good reason to do so.

The page you are pointing at contains documentation for the bgColor
DOM attribute, but clearly marks it as deprecated. I don't see why we
wouldn't do the same for any other attribute the HTML 5 deprecates.

> So, as a first step, can I get people to express opinions on which of
> the following should apply to <font color="blue">:
>
> 1) It's a conformance error, such as it is today in HTML 5.
> 2) It's a a downplayed error at it represents vestigial markup.
> 3) It's conformant.
> 4) The HTML 5 spec should be silent on this matter.
>
> Note: I'm not asking for general principles or how to apply the above
> answer to any other question.  It is quite possible that there might be
> some who feel that font should be a conformance error and summary should
> be conformant, or vice versa, or that the spec should address one but
> not the other.  I'm simply asking about the color attribute on the font
> element at this time.

Given that simple question, I think we should go with 1. CSS is a much
better alternative for styling, and having both HTML and CSS provide
styling features seems redundant. Additionally, I don't believe that
HTML will ever provide enough styling features that people won't need
to resort to CSS anyway.

Thus I believe that we should leave styling to CSS and remove features
from HTML 5 that are purely for styling purposes.

/ Jonas

Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 22:28:44 UTC