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HTML 5.2 Recommendation

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Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#61

Post by tptacek »

colanderman wrote: post #56
geofft wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the point - web authors are supposed to use feature detection instead of writing to a particular standard version. It turns out to be a better model for large interfaces. Yes, in theory, you can ask "Is this OS POSIX.1-2008-compliant or not." In practice, it takes a while to e fully POSIX.1-2008-compliant, and so you get autoconf, with its individual feature detections of specific function. Less clean, but…

How does one perform feature detection in a static HTML page? As far as I can tell the only way to author a compatible web page these days is by checking every damn feature of HTML you use against some humongous table like Can I Use? before assuming your audiences' browsers support it. Compare to versioned specs, where I need simply determine the minimum spec version supported by my target audience (and any exception…

By using conditional includes and fallback CSS.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#62

Post by currysausage »

bringtheaction wrote: post #53

Wasn't HTML 5 supposed to be the last explicit version and then it would be a living standard without changing the version number?

"HTML", not "HTML 5", yes: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/

The W3C regularly publishes forks [1] of the WHATWG HTML Living Standard. They have good SEO, but not much relevance.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2014Apr/0034...

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#63

Post by dmitriid »

wolfgke wrote: post #34
dmitriid wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/5swe9b/what_is_... tl;dr: Ignore w3c's HTML "standards" as they are (often poor) copies of WHATWG's standards.

> WHATWG's standards I my opinion one cannot call something a "standard" that changes every few days. EDIT: In this sense W3C's HTML 5.x can be considered a rather badly authored (cf. other comments here) standard, while what the WHATWG releases is not something that even measures up to a standard, but it is the daily version of how HTML is supposed to be today.

https://github.com/whatwg/html/blob/master/FAQ.md

What parts of the standard are stable?

The whole standard is more or less stable. There are some parts of it that describe new technologies that have not yet been implemented everywhere, but at this point those additions are only added after the design itself is pretty stable. Such additions must also have the support of two or more implementers, per our working mode[1].

Why are there no stable snapshots, or versions, of the standard?

In practice, implementations all follow the latest standard anyway, not so-called "finished" snapshots. The problem with following a snapshot is that you end up following something that is known to be wrong. That's obviously not the way to get interoperability!

This has in fact been a real problem at the W3C, where mistakes are found and fixed in the editors' drafts of specifications, but implementers who aren't fully engaged in the process go and implement obsolete snapshots instead, including those bugs. This has resulted in serious differences between browsers.

[1] https://whatwg.org/working-mode#additions

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#65

Post by currysausage »

ChrisSD wrote: post #25
kryptiskt wrote: post #4

"Although we have asked them to stop doing so, the W3C also republishes some parts of this specification as separate documents."

> Copyright © 2017 WHATWG (Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ > You are free to: > Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format > Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

To quote the W3C itself: "Forking a specification imposes high costs, and is therefore not recommended" (http://www.w3.org/2013/09/html-faq)

And Hixie/the WHATWG: "It is critically important (not just here but in life at large) to understand the difference between something being _a right_, and something being _right_." (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2014Apr/0034...)

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#66

Post by jraut »

masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

Dropping the support does not make the elements non-functional. Instead, they are presented differently. Formats and notations do undergo changes.

The comment mentions long-lived MS-Word doc. Which version of those, specifically, has been around the longest so far?

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#67

Post by wolfgke »

LaGrange wrote: post #59
wolfgke wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WHATWG's standards I my opinion one cannot call something a "standard" that changes every few days. EDIT: In this sense W3C's HTML 5.x can be considered a rather badly authored (cf. other comments here) standard, while what the WHATWG releases is not something that even measures up to a standard, but it is the daily version of how HTML is supposed to be today.

It's not enough to be stable to be a standard, you also need authority that enforces it. Either because people "respect you" (whatever that means), or because there's a central authority forcing them to implement the standard, people actually implement it. If they don't, then it's not much of a standard. So, WHATWG is in constant flux, and W3C has about as much authority as I do. _Thankfully_ in practice WHATWG is "s…

> It's not enough to be stable to be a standard, you also need authority that enforces it.

There exist lots of standards that hardly anybody cares about. So this is clearly not true.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#68

Post by currysausage »

ChrisSD wrote: post #52
geofft wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask someone to stop doing something legal. I'd hate to live in the sort of world where you can't. HN moderators would send the police after you to seize your laptop if you make bad comments. The only way to get your roommate to stop eating your plums would be to charge them with larceny. Every relationship would end with a restraining order, or it wouldn't be over. Failing to turn in a homework assignment on…

Sure but they are using the copyright to insist on attribution, which undermines the argument that they are simply against using the law. If they really didn't care they'd use CC0. And in the quoted statement they are not saying the W3C should improve their process for forking WHATWG's work. They are saying the W3C shouldn't fork their work at all. So despite their specifically chosen license (with easy to understand…

Most of your points are addressed by Ian in an old email:

"In the case of the WHATWG specifications, the licenses allow broad re-use, so that implementors can copy-and-paste text into their comment blocks, so that tutorial writers can copy-and-paste text into their documentation, so that experiments we haven't considered can spring up without inhibition, and so that, if the WHATWG stops being a good steward (like the W3C stopped being a good steward in the early 2000s), the next group of spec editors doesn't have to start from scratch." (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2014Apr/0034...)

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#69

Post by vorpalhex »

masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

The HTML mode tag should put the browser into compatibility mode. This content should not be lost.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#70

Post by Touche »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #50
Touche wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something changes often doesn't mean it is unstable. Do you ever shop at amazon.com? I do, and I find it pretty stable. Just because it changes often doesn't mean things are sloppily accepted, or that experimental ideas are added and later removed. Indeed, if you want to build something for the web, reading an outdated document that contains bugs browsers have already fixed is not a good idea.

This just speaks from lack of experience: that's exactly what it means in the world of software. Do you not understand what specification means? "Specific" is even in the word. You can't compare it to browsing on Amazon, because functionality doesn't just go missing and literally break buying things; functionality doesn't just suddenly get added and people rely on the exact font size and copy of a particular header i…

Nothing you said here is true of the WHATWG standard. It doesn't make breaking changes and it is specific.
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