- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 11:13:31 +1100
- To: "Michael[tm] Smith" <mike@w3.org>
- Cc: Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote: > Hi Steve, > > Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, 2014-02-25 15:49 +0000: > >> Section 4.3.10.1 Creating an outline [1] defines an outlining algorithm, >> but there are no implementation requirements for user agents. > > True but there are nonetheless requirements, and other implementations of > the requirements. So it's clear at least that the algorithm is implementable. > > For the UA case what's lacking at this point is any requirement for how UAs > must expose it. > > However, there is already a JavaScript library that follows the spec to > provide an "HTML5Outline(element)" method that returns an outline object > for a subtree or whole document -- depending on what element you give it -- > (and as a bonus an outline.asHTML convenience method to generate an HTML > representation of an outline) - I like that idea, but I would prefer it to be declarative since it has clear rendering consequences. Cheers, Silvia. > > https://code.google.com/p/h5o/ > > So I'd like for the spec to actually explicitly define something like that > HTML5Outline(element) method, or an element.createOutline or whatever name. > But so far Hixie's not been keen on adding such a createOutline method to > the spec, and nobody else has yet specced anything for it. So here we are. > >> Authors/developers have been lead to believe that the algorithm is >> something real that is implemented by user agents, > > For better or worse, the outline algorithm is actually real already. It > doesn't have to be implemented in UAs to be real. It's implemented per spec > in some other tools -- including some browser plugins/extensions and in the > validator -- so it's not like it's completely irrelevant or something. > >> this has lead to the >> dissemination of incorrect authoring advice in books, on the web etc. > > Well. I don't think that can be blamed on the spec. The spec clearly does > not yet require UAs to expose an outline in way. People who write books > about HTML have an obligation to read the spec and understand it. Otherwise > they shouldn't be writing books about HTML. > >> I propose to add a note at the start of section 4.3.10.1 to clarify, >> something along the lines of: >> >> "the implementation of the outline algorithm in user agents is not >> required, Its inclusion in the specification is for informative purposes >> only. " > > I think that would be a misleading note, for the reasons I gave above. The > algorithm is not there for informative purposes only. It's there so that we > can have a standard means for constructing an outline from an HTML > document, and interoperability among tools that want to provide some way to > expose an outline from an HTML document. > > So if you were to add a note I'd suggest it be something more like: > > This specification does not yet require browsers to expose any means for > Web authors to programatically generate an outline from a document. > Therefore no browsers yet actually directly expose any means Web authors > can use for generating an outline. However, JavaScript libraries may > provide some mechanism (in fact such libraries already exist) and end > users may be able to view an outline for a document by using, for > example, a third-party browser plugin that follows the outline algorithm > to generate an outline (in fact, such browser plugins already exist). > >> [1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#outlines > > --Mike > > -- > Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike >
Received on Friday, 28 February 2014 00:14:18 UTC