Re: <br> and generated-content

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 7:20 PM, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk>
wrote:

>
> Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>
>>  concern him/herself with everything that an author might do, "consistent
>> with the specification" or not. (And it is the duty of the spec author to
>> ensure that specifications prescribe behaviour for everything an author
>> might do, so that question does not arise.)
>>
>>  This is something that is special to the modern web.
>

Not really. For example, modern programming languages precisely define what
is a syntactically valid program and the semantics of all syntactically
valid programs (in contrast to older languages like C and C++ where there
are large gray areas of "undefined behaviour").

Most other standards make heavy reliance on defining areas where behaviour
> is explicitly undefined.  It is probably impossible, because there will
> always be combinations the specifiers forgot and get implemented
> differently.
>

Mistakes will always be made, but it's important to have the right goals.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]