- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 22:42:15 +0000 (UTC)
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, ?istein E. Andersen wrote: > > HTML can be used as an advanced text format, and people may want to > convert existing plain text to HTML. For example's sake, consider the > following: > > > A Short Document > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > This is a short plain-text document which someone > > might want to convert into HTML. > > > > As faithful readers of this list will recall, > > /R?gles typographiques/ requires note names to be > > typeset in italics (/ut/, /r?/, /mi/, etc.), > > which is not possible in plain text. > > This corresponds to the following HTML: > > > <h1>A Short Document</h1> > > > > <p>This is a short plain-text document which someone > > might want to convert into HTML. > > > > <p>As faithful readers of this list will recall, > > <i>R?gles typographiques</i> requires note names to be > > typeset in italics (<i>ut</i>, <i>r?</i>, <i>mi</i>, etc.), > > which is not possible in plain text. > > Unfortunately, this is not valid; the following two lines must be added > to the top: > > > <!DOCTYPE html> > > <title>A Short Document</title> > > A <title> is usually a good idea, but is it really necessary to require > this for conformance? After all, a <title> is not something which an > author is likely to forget, and leaving it out has no unexpected > consequences. Leaving it out has a pretty important consequence, it breaks user interfaces that need to refer to the document, e.g. "bookmarks" features in browsers. On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, Randy Drielinger wrote: > > If you're converting from a textfile, title could refer to the filename. > > If it's an automated process, it can be added by default. > > If it's manual, they'll have to remember the short html5 doctype and the > title element. It does indeed seem easy to include it. On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Michael Enright wrote: > > If you use HTML as a text file format you can still let the receiving > parser infer all sorts of tags and allow yourself to write things like > Andersen's first HTML version. If you want a title, put a title element > in. Is the concern about validation? Can one really get in that much > trouble without a pedantic validator checking your work? Could the > validator's warning about missing doctype be taken as advisory? Is the > doctype a problem? It only affects the details of rendering (by turning > off quirks) and HTML5 is still not equivalent to pagemaker anyway, > especially without CSS. I'm not sure what you are asking for here. On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, ?istein E. Andersen wrote: > > It could, but chances are that the original filename would typically be > less useful than the URL, which is what most browsers use when the > <title> element is omitted, so this rather sounds like an argument > against forcing authors to include a <title>. I don't see why this would be the case. In practice, however, if one is at a loss as to what to use for the <title>, but one has an <h1>, then I would recommend using the <h1>'s contents. > Yes, my concern is that a validator should be useful as an authoring > tool and not overwhelm the author with spurious errors. As I see it, > leaving out <title> is very much like leaving out a paragraph of text > and not something that should matter for validation. As it affects user interfaces, and since the cost of including a <title> is so low, I think it makes sense to continue to make it required. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 15:42:15 UTC