RE: title (editorial) to scope (technical)

On Thu, 28 May 2009, Larry Masinter wrote:
> 
> For example, an authoring tool might have good use for a "version 
> indicator" (which version of this spec is this page intended to be valid 
> under), even if a browser has no use for such an indicator (because it 
> the browser has to be robust when receiving content with incorrect 
> version indicators.)

Why would an authoring tool not either just target the most recent version 
of the language that it supports, or target the version of the language 
that the user wants to target?

I don't understand why the file itself would be relevant in terms of which 
version the authoring tool should target.

(Also, in practice, authoring tools don't target language versions. They 
target eras of browser implementations.)


> A version indicator might have no impact on browsers -- they can likely 
> ignore it -- but if it has utility in other parts of the value chain, 
> and isn't harmful to other processors, it may still be useful and belong 
> in the specification.

If it is useful, I agree. This is why, for instance, the spec defines the 
"generator" <meta> type, or why it defines what is a conformance error for 
authors and validators, or why it defines how to convert HTML to RDF, or 
why we have the "description" <meta> type. All of these are features that 
are useful specifically in non-browser scenarios.

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

Received on Thursday, 28 May 2009 23:44:23 UTC