Re: Re-registration of text/html

"Leif Halvard Silli" <xn--mlform-iua@målform.no> wrote:

> Henri Sivonen, Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:20:22 +0200:
> > On Feb 21, 2010, at 11:35, Julian Reschke wrote:
> >> On 21.02.2010 10:09, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> My view/questions differs from that of Julian w.r.t. what he problems
> 
> are.
> 
> >> What's important is whether the new text/html will allow existing 
> >> HTML4 content to stay valid;
> > 
> > There are really multiple cases there:
> >  1) Should pre-existing valid HTML4 continue to be valid HTML4? (I'd
> 
> > say yes.)
> >  2) Should pre-existing valid HTML4 be valid HTML5? (I'd say it 
> > doesn't need to as far as precedent goes. Valid HTML 3.2 is never 
> > valid HTML4.)
> 
> The goal of HTML5 is version-less HTML? Or is it only HTML5 and
> onwards 
> that will be version-less? 

I think the goal should be that authors/tools target contemporary HTML, i.e. the newest spec. It's still possible that an old document was valid according to then-contemporary HTML spec.

That is, I think it's uncontroversial that HTML 2.0 and 3.2 are no longer contemporary. It's possible that documents that were authored when HTML 3.2 was contemporary were valid according to 3.2 then.

It doesn't follow that the HTML5 spec or now-current tools should make any particular effort to support authoring according to a legacy spec.

> Why does Validator.nu offer to validate HTML4 documents as HTML5 
> documents? Why does it offer to validate text/html XHTML1 documents as
> HTML5? Etc.

To ease migration.

> The problem that I see is that HTML5 defines a parser and that the 
> current version of the HTML5 spec draft says that the HTML5 parser 
> should ignore the @profile attribute.

The *parser* doesn't ignore @profile any more than it ignores @href. It's up to the upper layers of the UA to ignore stuff that the parser just puts into the DOM.

> But may be there will arrive vendors that say "we do also support
> HTML4 
> - we do not limit ourself to the HTML5 compromise" ?

Seems unlikely given the economics of developing HTML clients.

> > Do you believe in ever obsoleting specs? Does your concern about 
> > HTML4 extend to HTML 2.0? If not, why not?
> 
> Except for the very doctypes themselves of those specs, are there 
> things in HTML32 and HTML2 that did not make it to HTML4?

HTML 2.0 <NEXTID> at least.

> As one can see, the RFC's wording about compatibility with "the 
> Web"/preparedness for "the Web" is not congruent with what section
> 12.1 
> in the HTML5 draft says:
> 
>  ]]This document is the relevant specification. Labeling a 
>       resource with the text/html type asserts that the 
>       resource is an HTML document using the HTML syntax.[[
> 
> The wording "HTML syntax" has a link pointing to 
> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/syntax.html#syntax>, which indicates
> that 
> it is meant that the document uses _HTML5 syntax_.

This philosophical question could be avoided by stating that documents labeled "text/html" must be processed according to HTML5.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 15:13:26 UTC