Re: Statement why the Polyglot doc should be informative

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
> On 11/02/2012 06:44 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>
>> Since the document should only document conclusions drawn from normative
>> statements made elsewhere
>
> Why?

If the publication purports to document a subset of HTML that is also
XHTML with the same semantics, it should do what it purports to do in
order to avoid confusion. The Polyglot doc is already inspiring enough
confusion—of the same kind as the infamous Appendix C.

Exhibit A about confusion: “By doing this, your documents will almost
assuredly be better structured and of higher quality, yet still be
able to be treated as HTML5.”
(http://www.sitepoint.com/have-you-considered-polyglot-markup/)

Exhibit B about confusion:
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2012/11/09/In-defence-of-Polyglot
conflates the problem of generating output that works with incompliant
HTML consumers with polyglotness.

To keep truth in advertising, a profile that documents a set of
restrictions preferred by a group of polyglot enthusiasts should not
be labeled so that it looks like it's documenting the subset of HTML
that is also XHTML with the same semantics. For example, if you want
to define a profile that is successfully consumed by the HTML parser
of libxml2, I think you should design the profile by studying the
behaviors of the HTML parser in libxml2 and label the profile
something like “libxml2-compatible HTML profile” instead of drawing
conclusions from the definitions of HTML and XHTML and labeling the
result “polyglot”.

That said, the initial e-mail in this thread was not meant to inspire
more discussion on this mailing list. It was meant to serve as a
Process anchor point for making a Working Group Decision in accordance
with what the Chairs present at the face-to-face meeting said.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 9 November 2012 13:26:13 UTC