[Bug 27718] New: Avoid removing anything harmless

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27718

            Bug ID: 27718
           Summary: Avoid removing anything harmless
           Product: WebAppsWG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: DOM
          Assignee: annevk@annevk.nl
          Reporter: brettz9@yahoo.com
        QA Contact: public-webapps-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, www-dom@w3.org

This is just a general comment that I would hope that interfaces such as those
at http://www.w3.org/TR/dom/#dom-core would not be removed unless there was
some critical reason to alter or remove support for them such as to harmonize
conflicting browser implementations. In the spirit of what I thought was the
reason behind the rejection of XHTML 2 in the first place, it makes sense to
add features without breaking compatibility.

Just because attribute nodes or such are not all the rage does not make it fair
for the minority of applications that use them. I hope we can be tolerant and
be forward-looking where we can allow posterity to see or use very old
applications as time goes forward without needing a re-write.

Unlike platforms such as browser extension APIs which seem to gleefully leave
minor developers in the dust by frequently changing their APIs and forcing them
to accommodate, I would hope that at least HTML would continue on in the
relatively stable form it has.

I also feel that it is important to keep the precedent now of avoiding breaking
changes so that future implementers will not be tempted to refer to breaking
changes now as "acceptable losses" and instead preserve a tradition of making
the web continue to work for everyone.

If there are optimization or memory benefits to removing the interfaces,
perhaps an HTML equivalent to JavaScript's strict mode could be added (though
the empty DOCTYPE would not be adequate to this purpose since apps have already
been built relying on it while still using the older interfaces).

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Received on Wednesday, 31 December 2014 18:27:45 UTC