Re: Bug 7034

On 03/22/2010 10:10 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Mar 22, 2010, at 15:59, Sam Ruby wrote:
>
>> So what is the rationale for this restriction?
>
> I'll let Hixie respond to the question.
>
>>> When you talk about interop issues, do you mean actual interop
>>> issues with software deployed today (even if that software might
>>> fade away in the future) or interop issues in a future scenario
>>> where every piece of software conforms to the spec?
>>
>> If there are valid reasons to ignore a particular item, then a MUST
>> is not appropriate.
>
> If you push "valid reasons" hard enough, you can just do
> s/MUST/SHOULD/g and then validator UIs can label SHOULD violations as
> "errors".

Fallacy alert:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#The_slippery_slope_as_fallacy

That being said, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to 
substantively answer the questions I have posed to the extent that you can.

> You didn't say what sort of interop issues you are concerned about.

True.  That's because it is putting the cart before the horse a bit. 
Looking at the current set of errors, I see no coherent pattern.  That 
might be a failing on my part.  That might be because there is a lack of 
order.  (You seem to suggest that the policy is: scream loudly enough 
and you too can get your favorite pet peeve disallowed, that being said, 
I can point to counter examples, but let's not digress...)

Without knowing what problem these errors are trying to solve, I don't 
feel I can submit bug reports.

Interop issues might be one criteria.  Might not.  I can name other 
criterias that might or might not work.

It might help if I we looked at some real data.

I recently did an exercise where I did a quick (and I must stress: 
quick!) sort of a number of web sites and analyzed the errors produced.

I can't imagine any valid reason why one should expect to find a 
trailing semicolon in an anchor tag despite the fact that it does not 
cause any interop problems:

http://intertwingly.net/stories/2010/03/21/www.sina.com.cn#stray_semicolon

I can see valid reasons for one to ignore the requirement that 
ampersands must be escaped in attribute values that represent a URI:

http://intertwingly.net/stories/2010/03/21/www.sina.com.cn#escape

My sort may be bogus.  People may differ on where to draw the line.  But 
I think that these are the questions that need to be discussed before 
scores of bugs are filed.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Monday, 22 March 2010 14:52:00 UTC