I18N-ISSUE-24: Bug 12935 - <rt> should not auto-close ancestors [HTML5-mail]

I18N-ISSUE-24: Bug 12935 - <rt> should not auto-close ancestors [HTML5-mail]

http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/24

Raised by: Richard Ishida
On product: HTML5-mail

Bugzilla: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12935


Boris Zbarsky 2011-06-10 17:23:50 UTC

We're implementing ruby support in Gecko, and discovered that the HTML5 parsing
algorithm requires that <rt> close <rtc>.

This behavior does not match the pre-HTML5-parser Gecko behavior, the
pre-HTML5-parser WebKit behavior, Presto, or IE9+.

It does match IE8-.

Given that IE has already changed its behavior here once, I see no reason to
require them to change it again to what is arguably a less-useful behavior.  So
I think what we should do is to remove the <rt> magic from the spec entirely,
simplifying the spec and making it compatible with what IE9, Gecko 1.9.2,
Presto, and pre-HTML-parser WebKit.

There will still be the issue that it's not safe for authors to actually use
<rtc> until IE8- marketshare becomes negligible, but I would expect the
timeframe for this to be on par with the timeframe for HTML5 getting anywhere
close to REC if not shorter.  In the meantime, there is clearly not a serious
web compat issue with the proposed change, since IE9, Gecko 1.9.2, Presto, and
pretty recent WebKit all have/had that behavior.  So there should be nothing
stopping Gecko and WebKit from changing away from their current behavior.

Received on Tuesday, 14 June 2011 13:28:32 UTC