Re: Fwd: several messages from Orion Adrian

On 7/12/05, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote:
> Orion Adrian wrote:
> > You say you just remove them, but user agents cannot stop using them can they?
> 
> In light of you using HTML as an example of desirable versioning earlier in this
> thread, this is interesting. For example, HTML 4.x no longer has a <plaintext>
> tag, but user agents cannot stop supporting it, because it's actually used...
> So this is a problem whether or not you have a document level version indicator
> (the doctype in HTML).
> 
> Not only that, but other HTML 2.0 tags have indeed been removed, and content
> that uses them (and the HTML 2.0 doctype) no longer works "right" in modern
> browsers.  That's not what you want out of versioning, from what I gather.

No, it's not, but that's because HTML didn't enforce it's versioning.
Even an element once removed could still be used or at least that's
why I'm hearing. HTML has been the king of resilient, but
unmaintainable. An HTML file is almost impossible to kill, but then
again during that time period the UA's were impossible to maintain.

What I'm looking for is versioning enforced. If you specify a 1.1 DTD,
then don't allow elements that have been obseleted for 2 versions. But
do allow someone who has specified a 2.0 DTD to use elements from a
2.0 spec and have the browser still work.

This means content never dies because it didn't update itself. This is
akin to good url's don't change. But that doesn't mean that future
versions of the spec or the renderer should have to maintain that 2.0
spec. The 2.0 renderer should be automatically downloaded or a
converter used the first time it's encountered.

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Wednesday, 13 July 2005 02:53:02 UTC