Re: XMLHttpRequest Comments from W3C Forms WG

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 4:40 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

So, basically, what you are saying is that you can't pick up this spec
and, say, implement it in [insert favorite programming language]
easily without a whole bunch of baggage from HTML5? Seems like pretty
poor engineering, but that might not be the fault of the specification
(i.e., given that XHR is a reverse engineering of something that is
closely tied to browsers). Its a shame though that we can't liberate
these things from browser behavior so they are more generally
applicable. I've seen XHR implemented in other classes of product, but
it'd be a shame if such products can't ever conform to the spec.

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>



-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Friday, 18 December 2009 23:10:28 UTC