Re: HTML5 Authoring Conformance Study

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Mar 21, 2010, at 7:38 AM, Shelley Powers wrote:
>
>  I may be wrong, and it's up to Sam to correct, but I didn't get the
>> impression that Sam's acceptable solution is to remove all authoring
>> conformance requirements. I thought, and Sam correct me if I'm wrong, that
>> he was asking for the rationale behind the authoring conformance
>> requirements. If there is no rationale for some, or many, then the authoring
>> conformance requirement is based on one person's opinion.
>>
>
> I think Sam has been very clear that removing all author conformance
> requirements would be one solution that is acceptable to him, though not
> necessarily the only solution.
>

Yes, I imagine there is no rationale for any of them, then the only course
to take is removal.

Seriously, do you believe there is no rationale for all the authoring
conformance requirements?


>
> [...snip...]
>
>
>  Seems to me that when most of the web doesn't validate, and most pages
>> generate hundreds of errors, we had better have a good explanation for why
>> we're unleashing this _abundance of helpful information_ on the world, or
>> risk losing credibility.
>>
>> If we don't understand why these items are errors, we're going to look
>> like pedantic idiots. No offense to anyone intended, that's just how it's
>> going to be.
>>
>
> What I've found is that very few of the most popular pages validate as
> their declared doctype. Out of the Alexa top 100 sites, only 8 have main
> pages that validate. So this problem is not new with HTML5, though it's true
> that we have the opportunity to improve matters. In the course of the study
> so far, a lot of documents seem to produce fewer errors as HTML5 than as
> their declared doctype.
>
> To the best of knowledge, the rationale for most HTML4 author conformance
> requirements is not publicly documented. But I think it would be
> uncharitable to call the authors of HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 "pedantic
> idiots". The rationale for excluding presentational elements and attributes
> from the Strict DTD is somewhat documented, but seems approximately
> equivalent to "Use CSS instead".
>
>
This isn't about HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0. This is about the document we're
working on now. Bringing up past efforts or other group efforts is a
strawman. We should only be concerned about the specifications this group is
responsible for.


Regards,
> Maciej
>
>
Shelley