Re: ISSUE-55: Re-enable @profile in HTML5 (draft 1)

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Manu Sporny wrote:
>> Here's my definition of a backwards incompatible change as it applies to 
>> this discussion:
>>
>> "Any change in HTML5 that, given an HTML5-conformant User Agent, will 
>> cause a previously conformant HTML4 document to no longer be a 
>> conformant HTML5 document."
> 
> I don't think that definition makes sense. What does the user agent have 
> to do with the conformance of a document? Why would an HTML4 document ever 
> be a conforming HTML5 document?
> ...

It makes a lot of sense if a developer is told to upgrade his code to 
emit conforming HTML5 instead of valid HTML4, and finds that after 
"updating" the doc type, there's another set of changes that need to be 
made, some of which potentially being non-trivial (such as rewriting 
revs to rels with inverse link relations) or impossible (such as 
removing @profile while staying conformant to GRDDL, DC-HTML, ...).

>> Now, if one were to have a large number of articles written in HTML4, 
>> migrating those articles to HTML5 isn't as simple as removing the 
>> DOCTYPE at the top of the document.
> 
> Why would one need to migrate legacy documents to HTML5? The whole point 
> of the backwards-compatibility design is that HTML4 documents will 
> continue to render the same in HTML5-conforming user agents as they did in 
> HTML4-contemporary user agents.

Maybe because, strangely enough, the plan is to take advantage of HTML5 
features?

> ...


BR, Julian

Received on Monday, 12 October 2009 07:49:34 UTC