Re: Bug 7034

On 03/23/2010 10:08 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> On Mar 23, 2010, at 6:39 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>
>> On 03/23/2010 05:14 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>>
>>> 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.
>
> [chair hat off]
>
> To give a specific example, I would like to consistently avoid
> presentational markup on the webkit.org, but I do not want to add an
> xmlns declaration to every page.

Two things:

[chair hat off]

(1) that goes into the territory that I previously referred to as YAGNI, 
unless you also want to explicitly close all open elements and 
consistently quote your attributes.  My intent was only intended to 
propose a "no motor cycle helmets" version and a "with motorcycle 
helmets" version.  The combinatorics get much more complicated otherwise.

[chair hat on]

(2) I want to make it clear: you (personally) would be willing to add 
some bytes to your pages, but you personally could not live with those 
bytes starting out with the characters x m l n s, and you personally 
find this, ... what?  Offensive?

>> 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.
>
> I don't believe that was the only rationale given, and I don't believe
> it was given as a rationale for anything besides banning presentational
> markup. (I am also not sure it is a very good rationale for anything.)

[chair hat off]

I would someday like to get a straight answer to the question: what is 
the rationale?

[chair hat on]

Will somebody please answer Sam's question?  :-)

>> 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.
>
> [chair hat on]
>
> I recently asked Ian to give expedited consideration to a few bugs
> (mostly ones that impact ISSUE-79 and ISSUE-31, since the former was
> decided by the Working Group, and the latter has a call for
> counter-proposals about to close). I didn't ask him to do so for bug
> 7034, since the topic is actively under discussion and I'd like to give
> him a chance to consider the mailing list discussion before entering a
> resolution. However, you are free to make your own request to him.

[chair hat on]

I did make that request:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Mar/0591.html

You are free not support that request, but I believe that it is key to 
issue 41 which is also about to close.

> Regards,
> Maciej
>
> P.S. I also think your proposal above, to make some conformance criteria
> apply only if the root element has
> 'xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/', would be a reasonable bug and
> probably more productive than bug 7034.

[chair hat off]

I disagree.  I would expect that a bug that requested that "some" 
conformance criteria be returned immediately with a request for more 
information.  If rationale is provided in the response to 7034, that 
might be enough for me not to pursue this.  If 7034 reaches a state 
where change proposals are appropriate, I will provide one, completely 
with rationale.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 02:35:26 UTC