- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 16:14:21 -0700
- To: brenton strine <brenton.strine@gmail.com>
- Cc: WHATWG List <whatwg@whatwg.org>
On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 4:03 PM, brenton strine <brenton.strine@gmail.com> wrote: > However, it still looks like the most upsetting implication of his > timeline, namely that the WHATWG is prioritizing implementors over > authors, remains unclarified. Is it a misconception to say that the > levels of priority outlined in the W3C HTML design principles [4] are > not being followed here? Yes, it's a misconception, since @srcset and <picture> are roughly equally easy for an implementor to implement. The "prioritizing" language is about valuing the *needs* of one group over another. For example, if we rejected a suggestion because it was slightly harder to implement despite being better to author, that would be prioritizing impls over authors. What happened here is simply that Hixie thought that one syntax (which happened to be close to one suggested by someone on the Safari team) was better than another syntax (which happened to be suggested by the CG). The <picture> proposal presented by the CG was insufficient to address all the use-cases, as well. (In particular, the resolution-negotiation use-case.) It can easily be extended to address that, of course. (For example, by adding a @res attribute.) If you did this, though, then you're back to two equally-powerful syntaxes, and choosing one or the other based on personal taste. This is what we *did* end up with, in reality, and @srcset was chosen there. > Especially since it seems that we can extend > Tim's timeline with: > > 7. Authors react negatively to the addition of 'srcset' in the draft. > 8. The 'living' draft is not changed and the authors' anger eventually > fades into hopeless acceptance because once something goes in to the > draft, it is set in stone forever and for all time. As far as I can tell, the majority of the anger over @srcset was due to bad initial information. A lot of people thought at first that @srcset was less functional than <picture>, and didn't understand the functionality that it did present. Once all that misunderstanding was cleared up (due to threads like this one), a lot of that anger evaporated as well. Now we're back to a much simpler "I like syntax A instead of syntax B" argument. ~TJ
Received on Monday, 21 May 2012 23:15:32 UTC