Re: philosophy Re: Conformance requirements on browsers

On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:08:28 +0500, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 07:29:26 +0200, Charles McCathie Nevile  
> <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>
>>> That can be a valid argument, but, if it is required for compat, its  
>>> behavior should be in the spec.
>>
>> This assumes that the requirement for compatibility or the spec's  
>> coverage
>> of everything is sufficiently universal. That seems like a poor
>> assumption. If it were true, I would be worried about whether the spec
>> would be doing the right task.
>>
>> The web is *different* in different countries, languages and markets.  
>> The extent to which it should meet everyone's requirements is a question
>> of judgement. But it would appear that we can judge the question of
>> whether it *does* by the extent to which they are prepared to change
>> things to meet it. People's perceptions of their market is unlikely to
>> be perfect. I believe that includes the Working Group and its editors.
>>
>> So the fact that a spec forbids something strikes me as a poor argument
>> that it is therefore not needed in some market.
>
> Yes. But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the opposite. If some  
> vendor makes the case that something is needed for compat in some  
> market, we should add it to the spec (assuming other vendors don't  
> object). This happens from time to time (e.g. <keygen>).

Certainly. But I believe that from time to time such suggestions from a  
browser are rejected. I know that comments from other kinds of  
implementers are rejected. And it is pretty clear that many browser  
developers aren't even providing feedback (Yandex is teh only vendor I  
know who is primarily non-english that *is* providing feedback - I don't  
recall anything from dolphin, tencent, 360, UCWeb, Baidu - just to name  
fairly big companies).

>>> In the case of <bgsound>, Gecko and WebKit never found it being big  
>>> enough compat loss not to support it, and Presto even intentionally  
>>> dropped support.
>>
>> Sure. I fail to see what useful information this provides about whether  
>> it matters to IE.
>
> What other browsers do is a useful data point when a browser vendor is  
> deciding whether to support something or not. It's not the only data  
> point, but one that is often used.

Sure.

>> More generally, it still appears that the assertion "things not  
>> permitted by the spec are forbidden" is basically untrue,
>
> Not in general, I think. In general, the spec requires what to do, and  
> what it doesn't say must not be done.

Is there a statement of this in the spec? (In *any* HTML spec?)

> In the case of supporting elements not defined in the spec, the spec  
> allows it with a "should not".

i.e., what the next paragraph says.

>> and that the assertion
>> that supporting elements not defined in the HTML5 spec (or in WHAT-WG
>> drafts as of today) makes a browser non-conformant is explicitly untrue.
>
> Yes. But a UA claiming to be conforming would have to state what the  
> reasons are for violating the "should not" in order to be convincing. :-)

Well, it depends who has to be convinced. How does

"Фича очень важная дла 3 клиентов которие не можем сказать"

work as a statement - is that sufficiently convincing?

>> For what it's worth, that seems like the right situation to me.

cheers


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 16 September 2013 11:51:59 UTC