Re: XMLHttpRequest Comments from W3C Forms WG

On Dec 17, 2009, at 3:15 PM, Klotz, Leigh wrote:

> OK, so is the conclusion that XHR is implementable only in HTML5 and  
> should be re-titled "XMLHttpRequest in HTML5" or something similar?

I think your premise is false, and I don't such a retitling would be  
helpful. The XHR spec does not require a full implementation of HTML5.  
It only references some concepts from HTML5. The XHR spec could be  
implemented in an SVG or HTML4 or XHTML 1.0 implementation that did  
not support most aspects of HTML5 at all, as long as it could satisfy  
the requirements implied by those definitions. Your proposed title  
change would imply that the XHR spec could only be implemented by an  
HTML5 UA, but that is not accurate.

All we have here is a case of suboptimal factoring of the  
specifications, so that some concepts of very general applicability to  
the Web platform are presently only defined in HTML5. Some of them are  
in the process of being broken out, some of them already have been  
broken out, and more are likely to be broken out in the future.  
XMLHttpRequest is in fact a pretty good example of factoring something  
out of HTML5, and even though we haven't cleaned up its whole chain of  
dependencies, I do not think that is a reason to stuff it back into  
HTML5, or to block progress on perfecting its dependencies.

Regards,
Maciej

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonas Sicking [mailto:jonas@sicking.cc]
> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 3:14 PM
> To: Klotz, Leigh
> Cc: Boris Zbarsky; WebApps WG; Forms WG
> Subject: Re: XMLHttpRequest Comments from W3C Forms WG
>
> As Ian already has mentioned. No one is disputing that most of these  
> things should be factored out of the HTML5 spec. But so far no one  
> has stepped up to that task. Until someone does we'll have to live  
> with the reality that these things are defined in the HTML5 spec and  
> the
> HTML5 spec alone.
>
> / Jonas
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Klotz, Leigh  
> <Leigh.Klotz@xerox.com> wrote:
>> Great!  It sounds like more progress is being made on both putting  
>> experience from implementations back into specifications, and in  
>> modularizing the XHR document references, since it will give a  
>> better place than HTML5 for reference.
>>
>> Leigh.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Boris Zbarsky [mailto:bzbarsky@MIT.EDU]
>> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 2:38 PM
>> To: Klotz, Leigh
>> Cc: WebApps WG; Forms WG
>> Subject: Re: XMLHttpRequest Comments from W3C Forms WG
>>
>> On 12/17/09 2:22 PM, Klotz, Leigh wrote:
>>> Thank you for the clarification.  Surely then this ought to be fixed
>>> with an IETF or W3C document describing this fact
>>
>> After some pushback, there is in fact such a document being worked  
>> on.
>> It's not quite far enough to reference normatively last I checked....
>>
>>> Is it defined in http://www.w3.org/html/wg/href/draft ?
>>
>> Yep.
>>
>> -Boris
>>
>>
>

Received on Friday, 18 December 2009 03:42:16 UTC