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

On 6/12/09 7:16 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Rob Sayre<rsayre@mozilla.com>  wrote:
>    
>> On 6/12/09 5:44 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote
>>
>> Well, the question didn't seem to be as much "what good would it be to
>> abolish<font>  from the web". That question seems easy to answer.
>>
>> If the answer is "it wouldn't be good", then I agree. What is your answer?
>>      
>
> In an ideal world, where we actually could abolish<font>  from the
> web, having people use<span class="...">  would mean that we could
> reduce the size of the language (not a huge benefit, but something),
> it'd also reduce the size of pages if people used CSS applied to
> paragraphs, rather than putting a<font>  inside every paragraph.
>    

What would http://www.google.com gain? That's a real use case. Of 
course, I also mentioned that the wisdom and benefit of CSS depends on 
how much context you have control over. If you're submitting a facebook 
comment, it buys you basically nothing.

> Also, keeping stylistic elements in the language is a slippery slope.
> It's much better that we encourage people to use CSS than to try to
> duplicate CSS using tags and attributes. HTML would simply be a mess
> otherwise.
>    

We don't "encourage" with MUST. Imagine a page of full words with <font> 
elements surrounding them. Let's say 100. As currently specified, the 
author of the page would have to go through and change each one, with no 
real improvement. But the validator would go from 100 errors to zero. 
It's like that Monty Python skit where everyone switches chairs and says 
"there, that's much better".

>>
>> That's a bad answer. People don't care about invalid markup if it works.
>> http://www.google.com would seem to be example number 1.
>>      
>
> So what do you propose we do? Not specifically regarding font, but
> regarding conformance requirements in general?
>    

Keep UA conformance requirements, and write a document for lint tools 
after they've competed for a while. imho, the grave concern over 
preventing typos looks like a dishonest way of justifying central 
control. The technical benefits they might provide are really small, if 
at all present--it smells bad.

- Rob