Re: Precision and error handling (was URL work in HTML 5)

"\"Martin J. Dürst\"" <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp>, 2012-10-02 18:24 +0900:

> On 2012/10/02 17:11, Michael[tm] Smith wrote:
> >"\"Martin J. Dürst\""<duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp>, 2012-10-02 16:37 +0900:
> >
> >>See Noah's point about making the author spec the main HTML5 spec.
> >
> >I'm not sure what it would mean to make the author spec the "main" HTML5
> >spec.
> 
> Well, it would send a clear signal that the reasonably clean and
> straightforward stuff for the authors is what matters most, and that the UA
> stuff is necessary evil, rather than the main goal.

I think it largely already does that.

There's a clear separation in the spec between the UA parsing rules in
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/parsing.html and the parts spec that define
document-conformance criteria -- the per-element sections starting with
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/the-html-element.html and the
document-conformance syntax rules in http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/syntax.html

I don't think very many normal users will under their own volition to go
wandering into a section titled "Parsing HTML documents", and fewer still
will assume that the rules defined there apply to them as authors

The information about the unpleasant cases in parsing behavior is buried in
that section -- generally in sets of steps that are preceded with language
like 'When the user agent is to apply the rules for the "in table"
insertion mode, the user agent must handle the token as follows'.

It's not stuff that the average reader is going to just stumble upon and
end up confusing with the actual document-conformance requirements that are
clearly stated in the parts of the spec they are actually likely to read.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2012 09:45:12 UTC