Re: KD016 Orthogonal specifications

Le 15 oct. 2004, à 15:45, Norman Walsh a écrit :

> / Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> was heard to say:
> | * KD 016
> | 5.1. Orthogonal Specifications
> | """the software developer community would benefit from being able to
> | find all HTTP headers from the HTTP specification (including any
> | associated extension registries and specification updates per IETF
> | process). Perhaps as a result, this feature of the HTML specification
> | is not widely deployed. """
> |
> | Not true. Use case. I'm a technical writer, I'm explaining how to
> | create an HTML file, foo.html, I give a link to the html 
> representation
> | of foo.html and therefore served as text/html. Now I want to explain
> | the source code, and I would like to use the benefits of the object
> | element to display the source code of the same file. So I set in my
> | object element the text/plain mime type.
> | Though because of precedences rules of HTTP over HTML, the only way 
> to
> | do is to not specify on the server side the mime type but only in the
> | meta of the HTML file. So that once it can be displayed as an HTML 
> file
> | or it can be displayed as a text file.
>
> I don't find your use case compelling. It sounds like you're having 
> trouble
> configuring your server to provide options for text/html or text/plain.

You CAN NOT send an HTML file as text/plain using HTML features.

Example: I'm having a file foo.html which is served by the server as an 
HTML file "text/html".

In a doc.html, I want to show the source code of this file.

<object data="http://example.org/foo.html" type="text/plain">
		<p>Source code of the Foo file.</p>
</object>


It will not be received by the browser as text/plain because by 
specification definitions. HTTP overrules HTML.

The only way to change the representation of the file is to change the 
name of the file, to foo.html.txt for example, but you don't have 
anymore one file but two files.

HTML specs can not predate on the HTTP spec for this case and on the 
server side, you don't know a priori if your file has to be sent in 
text/plain or in text/html because you don't know it has been called by 
an object element.

I hope it explains a bit more the problem.


I understand the meaning of the TAG on this section and I tend to agree 
with
	"A specification should clearly indicate which features advance into 
territory rightfully governed by another specification."

because it's dangerous. Though there are an evaluation of cost/benefits 
in terms of technical  values and usability.




-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager
*** Be Strict To Be Cool ***