Re: Bug 7034

On 03/23/2010 05:14 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> On Mar 23, 2010, at 7:24 AM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>
>>
>> The following is a suggestion that I don't expect will not initially
>> be popular, but I will put it out there in the spirit of
>> brainstorming. It truly is a "lets turn lemons into lemonade"
>> suggestion. I ask that everybody treat is as such.
>>
>> There is a sincere desire by some people to require ampersands to be
>> escaped, quote all attributes, close all open tags, get rid of tags
>> such as acronym, and to rid the internet of the scourge that is
>> presentational markup.
>>
>> At the same time, the discussion about "this is XHTML" vs "not it is
>> not" is showing no signs of going away. This discussion even persists
>> when the alleged XHTML is served as text/html, does not conform to any
>> known schema or DTD, and even when is not well-formed. I think that we
>> have an opportunity to change the topic.
>>
>> One possibility is to change the definition of the xmlns attribute on
>> the html tag from being a talisman to an opt-in to best practices.
>>
>> One downside of such an approach is that it would provide any means
>> for people who author content intended to be served as
>> application/xhtml+xml to opt out.
>
> Another downside is that many people who want to "opt in to best
> practices" would not agree that including the string
> 'xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/"' in a text/html document is
> itself a best practice. If you want to propose multiple validator modes
> triggered by something in the document itself, I would suggest using
> something less potentially polarizing as the trigger. That would also
> address the downside that you stated.

I'll give my normal response to such assertions: to ask somebody to come 
forward and state that such an approach is not acceptable to them 
personally (i.e., I'm not looking for somebody to argue on behalf of 
unnamed others), and to propose an alternative.

I'm still trying to gather rationale for the current criteria.  I've 
heard rationale of "appeasing standardistas/super friends", but that 
might be me misinterpreting (I certainly don't want to be accused of 
misrepresenting anyone <grin>).  I figured this was something that would 
appease rather than alienate that particular crowd.

In any case, this is all premature.  For the moment, I will argue for 
bumping the priority of bug 7034 is the right next step as I continue to 
assert that is is on the critical path for resolving a number of issues. 
  Even a WONTFIX is an acceptable answer at this point as that will 
enable us to solicit proper change proposals, complete with rationale.

> Regards,
> Maciej

- Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 01:40:26 UTC