- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:59:50 +0100
- To: undisclosed-recipients:;
At the HTML F2F, I was asked to provide rationale for my previously filed formal objection to the Polyglot Markup specification. http://dev.w3.org/html5/status/formal-objection-status.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2011May/0050.html This rationale includes: 1. Why the html-polyglot authoring guidelines should be produced as a *non-normative* document, and 2. Why it *should not* be published on the recommendation track. 1. Normative vs. Non-Normative Specifications should be considered normative when they seek to define implementation and authoring conformance criteria. Documents that merely seek to describe authoring practices or provide tailored information to a particular audience about content which is normatively defined elsewhere, should be non-normative. The HTML5 specification already normatively defines the conformance criteria for all of the features employed in both serialisations. The necessary requirements to meet in order to produce a polyglot document are inherently logical conclusions from these criteria. The polyglot guidelines only serves to document the overlap of the two serialisations as a convenience for authors who wish to pursue this style of document production, and should not try to normatively define that which is already normatively defined in HTML5. Such duplication of normative definitions has the potential for introducing unintentional conflict between the two specifications. By ensuring that the polyglot guidelines remain non-normative, then it is clear that, even in the case of such a conflict, the HTML5 specification's normative requirements take precedence over the guidelines' non-normative descriptions. 2. Recommendation Track vs. Note Track The Recommendation track implies a level of endorsement from the group that I do not believe is warranted in the case of these guidelines. Note that the boiler-plate Status section of a W3C Recommendation clearly states: "This document has been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups and interested parties, and is endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation." -- Pubrules (W3C) Publication as a recommendation could lead to the perception by the greater web community that the HTML WG itself endorses and recommends the adoption of these authoring practices by web developers. However, support among the working group members for producing or recommending the production of polyglot documents is far from universal. It is therefore not in the interests of the working group to either discourage, nor endorse through the recommendation track, the authoring of polyglot documents. Publication as a note, instead, allows authors to obtain information about producing polyglot documents if they choose, without implying any such endorsement, nor discouragement, from the working group itself. -- Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software http://lachy.id.au/ http://www.opera.com/
Received on Sunday, 4 November 2012 15:00:14 UTC