- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 13:21:05 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Jon Ferraiolo <jon.ferraiolo@adobe.com>
- Cc: Doug Schepers <doug@schepers.cc>, www-svg@w3.org
On Tue, 17 May 2005, Jon Ferraiolo wrote:
>
> The top priority is to put effort into getting interoperability with
> conformant content. Put the time and effort there. That's hard enough.
> There are a zillion ways content can be unconformant. If we specify
> behavior for each possible non-conformant situation, the spec itself
> will take an infinite amount of time, the test suite twice infinity, and
> the implementation thrice infinity. Well, maybe I exaggerate - I am just
> trying to make a general point about incorrect content when developing a
> standard.
Oh please. CSS includes all these cases, it doesn't take any more time
than not doing it. And it makes the spec a LOT more implementable. The
same applies to the xml:id spec, the WHATWG specs, the XBL2 proposal
draft, etc. Writing an unambigous spec is not hard.
Frankly, a spec that doesn't include error handling behaviour is
worthless, especially in the Web world where authors follow Murphy's law
religiously ("if there are two ways to do something, and one of those
ways will result in catastrophy, someone will do it").
The top priority should be in getting a spec that is interoperably
implementable. That includes error handling.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 18 May 2005 13:43:53 UTC