Re: [dom3core] getAttribute

On Dec 2, 2005, at 12:16 AM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>
> On Dec 1, 2005, at 6:34 AM, Ray Whitmer wrote:
>
>>
>> Can you tell me how many implementers of the standard would be  
>> made retroactively incompatible by this sort of change to an  
>> intentional part of DOM Level 1? I am not talking the major  
>> vendors current implementations, but other and prior  
>> implementatiions? Please enumerate those which will not be broken  
>> and let's see how many you leave out. It is perhaps not as  
>> relevant to me as you would like it to be that you personally do  
>> not care about these other implementations which followed the  
>> standard. I have know list but know of enough.
>
> Making either empty string or null an acceptable return value in  
> this case will break 0 implementations. Can you name any that would  
> be broken by making both behaviors conforming? I can't imagine how  
> this is possible.

This would also be true if we said, the standard allows any method to  
do anything.  You have completely missed the point of the standard.  
Saving face and appearing to comply was never the point.  Accurately  
describing the behaviors is.  With two possible returns, the behavior  
is no longer described usefully. We had that already with the broken  
misimplementation, we didn't need a standard change for that.

Ray Whitmer

Received on Friday, 2 December 2005 12:02:59 UTC