Re: "image analysis heuristics" (ISSUE-66)

On Sun, 7 Feb 2010, Steven Faulkner wrote:
> > 
> >As far as I am aware, the only links from the WHATWG complete.html spec 
> >to other specs are links to specs that are required to be implemented 
> >because they form the substrate on which HTML and its APIs are built, 
> >such that the implementors _cannot_ skip them even if they are tempted 
> >to.
> 
> I was referring to the W3C HTML5 specification, what i did not say was 
> there were thousands of links to other specs, but "thousands of links" 
> that being the very nature of the web, interlinked documents that is, 
> not one hermetically sealed docment that contains all knowledge.

I'm not sure what that sentence means.

The HTMLWG HTML5 spec is indeed less than ideal, at least compared to the 
complete.html spec, but that is entirely due to decisions out of my 
control, such as splitting out Web Sockets, Web Workers, Web Storage, 
Server-Sent Events, XHR, querySelector, Microdata, postMessage, and the 2D 
Context. Modulo those differences, however, the text is the same. I've 
tried to minimise the number of cases where those specs depend on each 
other, but there is a limit to how much I can avoid that.


> >but on average they are more likely to do the right thing when they 
> >find the information right there in the prose they are having to read 
> >anyway, than if it is "conveniently out of sight".
> 
> do you have any data to back this up?

Only circumstancial or anecdotal evidence. For example, see Boris' e-mail 
on this same thread.


> If you are concerned about people not reading the referenced text, why 
> not quote the relevant bit inline?

If I'm putting text in the spec, I might as well make it fit the spec's 
style and generally be consistent with the spec, there's no need to just 
quote it. It's not clear to me what advantage there would be to just 
having lots of quotes.


You skipped over a question I asked in the previous e-mail: If there is 
advice in the UAAG spec that you think implementors should follow here, 
then the best way we can ensure that it is followed is, IMHO, to also 
include it in HTML. Is there something I've omitted that UAAG recommends 
of relevance here? If so, what?

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

Received on Sunday, 7 February 2010 17:40:54 UTC