Re: About tests 37-41 (headers)

Hi Chris,

Johannes Koch wrote:
<quote>
The HTML 4 DTDs forbid the nesting of form through exclusion: (...)
The XHTML 1.0 spec forbids the nesting of form explicitly in the prose 
(Appendix B).
</quote>

Chris Ridpath responded:
<quote>
The WCAG2 Techniques document (still draft) has a technique regarding 
validation:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/#G134

It states "HTML pages include a document type declaration (sometimes 
referred to as !DOCTYPE statement) and are valid according to the HTML 
version specified by the document type declaration."

So this technique will, in effect, forbid nested forms.
</quote>

To my understanding, the techniques don't forbid anything, because they are 
non-normative documents. If you do nest forms, the conclusion should be 
that you are not using this technique, rather than saying that the 
technique forbids nested forms.

I would formulate an argument against nested forms in a different way: 
since the HTML specification forbids nested forms (regardless whether this 
is in an SGML DTD - for HTML 4.01 - or in prose - for XHTML 1.x), nested 
forms can be seen as ambiguous to user agents, and therefore violate SC 
4.1.1. I think the ambiguity resides in the relation between, for example, 
the submit buttons, the input fields and the action URL's: which belong 
with which? What gets submitted where when you activate 'submit'?

Regards,

Christophe


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 


Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm

Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:13:29 UTC