Re: Issue 30 (Was: RE: Getting HTML5 to Recommendation in 2014)

Hi Roy,

It appears you consider long descriptions to be an important use case, and longdesc to be a good solution to that use case. Would you object to using modularity (i.e. a separate extension spec) to satisfy this use case? Even if it's not  your preferred approach, could you live with it?

Regards,
Maciej

On Sep 20, 2012, at 3:51 PM, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:

> On Sep 20, 2012, at 2:54 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> On 09/20/2012 05:41 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>>> Whether or not the top 10,000 web sites home pages is a target market
>>> for longdesc is not relevant to the definition of HTML.  The Web is
>>> not that shallow, and HTML is expected to handle everyone's needs.
>>> I don't know why it is even being considered a rational objection.
>> 
>> It is relevant given the details of the proposal being offered:
>> 
>> http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld-rendering2.html
>> 
>> (Changes are marked with <ZZZ>...</ZZZ>)
> 
> I am not seeing the relevance.  Those are examples of how a UA might render
> a longdesc, if such an option were chosen by the user.  There doesn't seem to
> me to be any implication that it is one of the top 10,000 web sites home
> pages (or any home page, for that matter -- it looks like a scientific
> paper is being used as the example), nor does it seem to prevent the same
> rendering being applicable to a home page if that does occur.
> 
>>> Maybe someone should just ask TimBL is he thinks HTML should be limited
>>> to the needs of the top 10,000 home pages?  It would save time.
>> 
>> That's not the right question.
>> 
>> If longdesc is not intended to be used on home pages, then I would have expected the proposal for longdesc to indicate that it would be a conformance error for it to be used in such places.
> 
> Why would you have expected that?  In the entire history of HTML, I am
> not aware of any case that would call for such an expectation.  Rarely used
> attributes can be used within any page that an author might want to use them;
> doing so is not a conformance error.  That does not imply there is anything
> wrong when 10,000 home pages don't happen to use them.
> 
>> And such a requirement would likely be more general than just simply home pages.
>> 
>> As the people who are advocating the longdesc proposal that has been presented support both the rendering section that I point to above and strenuously object to conformance errors being produced by longdesc, I can only conclude that others may disagree with your assessment on whether longdesc is intended to meet everybody's needs.
> 
> It seems to me that your logic is based on an entirely false premise,
> both in terms of a mysterious need to be applicable to home pages and
> an even more mysterious need to have mark-up conformance be based on the
> type of page being served.
> 
> Regardless, I would strenuously object to any conformance requirement,
> on any element or attribute, that is based on what kind of page is
> intended.  How would any implementation conform to such a thing?
> I can deal with requirements on transmission, such as limiting what
> is allowed to be sent in HTML email messages, but I'd never look to
> the language definition to limit what I can or cannot have on my
> home page.
> 
> ....Roy
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 20 September 2012 23:27:03 UTC