Re: ACTION-128: Draft @summary voting text in conjunction with PF

On Jul 7, 2009, at 03:10, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> On Jul 6, 2009, at 4:37 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> ...? Or do you think we should actually make summary="" conforming,  
>> as
>> opposed to a down-played error?
>
> I think the difference between down-played error and regular error  
> is not very meaningful.

I don't like downplayed errors. On one hand they want to be errors but  
on the other, they are something that are designed to be easily  
ignorable. I have dragged my feet with them hoping they'd go away. One  
day I almost started implementing them but then I got a higher- 
priority item to deal with.

> The actual material difference between different diagnostic classes  
> is not friendliness in the validator, but rather whether authors can  
> still use the feature if they have a requirement (self-imposed or  
> otherwise) to produce fully conforming content.
>
> Thus, I think a suggested non-error diagnostic would be better than  
> a requirement for a down-played error, in that it would give the  
> advanced experts who choose to disregard the warning the opportunity  
> to have their content be conforming.


I don't really like spec-prescribed warnings, either, because I fear  
that if we start doing normative warnings, people start wanting to  
make failures to adhere to their code style aesthetics as normative  
warnings when the discussion won't affect valid/invalid.

However, if we could get rid of downplayed errors and avoid  
introducing multiple conformance profiles by introducing a handful of  
normative warnings, let's try it.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 07:00:49 UTC