- From: Smylers <Smylers@stripey.com>
- Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 13:45:47 +0100
- To: whatwg@lists.whatwg.org
Robin Berjon writes: > On 04/06/2013 11:08 , Smylers wrote: > > > Michael[tm] Smith writes: > > > > we receive a lot of comments and bug reports from confused/ > > > frustrated users who are trying to use values for meta@name that > > > are not registered. > > > > Could you give some examples of the kinds of <meta> names people are > > using? > > I've seen quite a few. One recent example is bug-assist.js — a > script that makes it easy for readers of a document to file bugs > about it — that looks for all metadata names that start with "bug." > and uses the remainder of the name as parameters to a Bugzilla bug > entry. Thanks. That's really helpful for understanding the issue. > The point is often that the person seeing the validity error is not > the same person who defined the metadata name. That seems to be an instance of the general scenario where a page includes some components provided by third parties (including where the main content is inserted into an outer template provided by a third party), and where a diligent local author wishes to check for errors in her content but not be nagged over problems in parts of the page out of her control. If the third parties care about conformance (or at least care about not losing customers who care about conformance), then they will be amenable to fixing bugs, such as the one Simon reported for bug-assist. And indeed in this case the validator error does something useful. If the third parties _don't_ care about conformance then there could be any sorts of errors in code they provide, not just those relating to <meta name=...> -- in which case it doesn't sound like it's going to be possible to quell all the error messages that third parties could make while still notifying authors about problems with their part. Maybe instead a validator could let an author select which portion of a page she has jurisdiction over? Or perhaps it could allow uploading both a 'known bad' empty template and a complete page, and only complain about errors in the second that aren't also in the first? (That would also help in a similar situation when editing an old, non-conforming site, and wishing to check that you haven't introduced any new errors, but aren't in a position right now to fix all the existing ones. You could upload the current error-strewn page and your proposed change, and only be told about errors you have introduced.) > It [registering <meta> names] doesn't seem to buy anyone much, either. That seems a more interesting assertion. Is any harm actually being caused by rogue <meta> names? If somebody changes bug-assist to use data-* attributes instead, does that make the world a better place -- or at least enough of a better place to be worth doing? The benefits would seem to be in avoiding naming clashes: * To bug-assist's developers (and users) it avoids that somebody else in the future mints clashing <meta> names which have a different meaning, and starts erroneously interpreting data intended for bug-assist . * To other minters of <meta> names it reduces either complaints about clashing or time spent checking for clashes (without a central list). Having a canonical list of allowed names and a validator that complains about names not on the list means that in the event of a clash, there's a place where a party using an unregistered name can be alerted to the possibility in advance. Whereas with any value allowed they don't get that. Note, I'm not saying those benefits do constitute sufficient reason to keep the check -- just that we should consider them, so that if we then abandon the check we have decided that they aren't worth bothering with. Cheers Smylers -- Stop drug companies hiding negative research results. Sign the AllTrials petition to get all clinical research results published. Read more: http://www.alltrials.net/blog/the-alltrials-campaign/
Received on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 12:46:17 UTC