Re: Re-registration of text/html

"Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:

> On 10.03.2010 16:33, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:24:59 +0100, Julian Reschke
> > <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> >> On 10.03.2010 16:12, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> >>> This philosophical question could be avoided by stating that
> >>> documents labeled "text/html" must be processed according to
> HTML5.
> >>> ...
> >>
> >> If we did that, we'd have to make sure that this doesn't break
> >> existing uses. So statements like
> >>
> >> "User agents should ignore the profile content attribute on head
> >> elements."
> >>
> >> would need to be fixed.
> >
> > Isn't that statement true for the majority of existing usage of the
> > profile attribute? And therefore a SHOULD requirement is adequate?
> 
> Why would a SHOULD requirement be adequate in that case? Me confused.

You are allowed to violate a SHOULD if you have a good reason to deviate from the default requirements. If you have non-browser legacy software that doesn't ignore @profile on content crafted specifically for that kind of minority legacy software, presumably keeping it functioning as before is a good reason.

In the general case, it's still good advice to say that UAs SHOULD ignore @profile, since Existing Content using @profile has been created in a context where the virtually all text/html consumers ignore it, so continuing to ignore it maintains legacy-compatible behavior.

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

Received on Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:01:50 UTC