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HTML 5.2 Recommendation

w3.org

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Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#141

Post by tomc1985 »

reificator wrote: post #91
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…

is no longer supported by browsers, but with a few css declarations it works just fine. Removing support for presentational markup does not mean a loss of information. Browsers will still render tags they don't recognize, and re-applying the styling of those tags is often trivial. (I mention because it's one of the more difficult, but not terribly so) As the web evolved, our needs changed. Do we still need the tag?

There are a ton of uses for old-style , , etc tags. CSS is both more verbose and more abstract. When I do not care about the "reusability" of a given code fragment, give me presentational markup tags all day long

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#142

Post by richev »

jraut wrote: post #66
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?

Personal MS Word anecdote: Word 2016 can successfully open and render my final year University project report, compiled in 1996 using Word 6.0. It contains a bunch of embedded images, tables and moderately complex diagrams drawn using Visio 2.0.

The report is saved across six .doc files, due to the size limitation of the 3.5" floppy disks we were using back then.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#143

Post by tannhaeuser »

exabrial wrote: post #94

I really wish we'd "simplify" the HTML spec. The "pave the cow paths" approach to allow non-closed tags and mix of various syntaxes has lead to an explosion of complexity. That has regressed into terrible performance and memory hungry parsers.

HTML had tag omission and other minimization features from day one since HTML is based on SGML which formalizes these notions. If by mix of various syntaxes you mean CSS, then I have to agree with you. There never was a need to define a new syntax for item/value pairs; plain markup attributes were and are sufficient for presentation properties.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#144

Post by bzbarsky »

taco_emoji wrote: post #126
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unapologetically still use the font tag, because most of the time I have no desire to bother with CSS.

Even inline? Blah vs. Blah

Just as a nit, "font-size:10pt" is a lot worse than from an accessibility perspective. is "one notch below the user's default size". If the user sets a 20pt font, it's going to be larger than 10pt.

You could use "font-size: small" to get the size="2" behavior.

(Also, "font-family: Whatever", not "font-face: Whatever".)

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#145

Post by ocdtrekkie »

taco_emoji wrote: post #126
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unapologetically still use the font tag, because most of the time I have no desire to bother with CSS.

Even inline? Blah vs. Blah

Note that your CSS example is longer and requires combining two different syntaxes. And for one change, the difference in length and complexity is much more apparent.

> Blah

vs.

> Blah

Which is easier to remember? Which is more obvious at a glance?

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#146

Post by tannhaeuser »

Touche wrote: post #76
wolfgke wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I do a project I want to be able to code against the standards from which browsers were developed; that is the WHATWG standard. I already argued that there is no WHATWG standard, but only a document that changes every few days. Even without this nitpicking: Which of these thousands of versions is the one on which the browser implementation is based on?

This one: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ . Contrary to some people's perception here, everything that goes into this is implemented by at least 2 browsers.

I hope we can agree HTML is used for text content first and foremost. A format that changes all the time at the whim of an ad company is basically useless for long-term preservation of legal documents, or documents in education, etc. Do you think having the latest web app fad is more important? Especially when the format has been around for 25 years now. "Innovation" on the Web is only happening so that Google can keep an edge in search tech, and for similar reasons.

Wake up.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#147

Post by wolfgke »

Touche wrote: post #139
xg15 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, which one? The one from November 14, 2017, the one from December 14, 2017 or the one from January 14, 2018? Do you really want to make a requirements document that describes something different at the day you sign it and at the day you deliver?

Sorry, but you can't print that page and use that forever. I understand that you wish that you could, but you can't. I live in the real world, so rather than reading a snapshot and hoping it stays that way forever, I just read the up-to-date version since that's what is implemented by browsers, not the PDF I saved 3 months ago.

It is a strong liability in a project contract if the standard with respect to which you implement the code changes under your feet.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#148

Post by ficklepickle »

domenicd wrote: post #118
ChrisSD wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This change to requiring attribution is actually fairly recent, and was made with some reluctance on the part of us editors, despite eventually agreeing it was the best path forward. See https://blog.whatwg.org/copyright-license-change

Thanks for the link! It's great to be able to read the reasoning behind decisions.

There is a typo in the third paragraph, first sentence, FYI. "Are not" is repeated.

  For example, there are derivative specifications ("forks") that are not are not prominently identified as copies of WHATWG standards

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#149

Post by om2 »

austincheney wrote: post #137
mastax wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not (uncontroversially) true. See the long discussion below or on any other W3C post on HN.

I don't need to see a comment thread here to understand the process. I have been following this for 20 years, long before there was a WHATWG. Additionally, WHATWG lost some credibility when they attempted to redefine the DOM and arbitrarily delete some node types. Granted, most of those types are legacy types not in use by anybody in long time, except for the attribute node type. Browser vendors simply ignored this f…

I’m not sure what you are referring to specifically, but WebKit aims to conform to WHATWG DOM and we check that against Web Platform Tests. We don’t even look at W3C DOM. I believe it’s th same for the other browser engines.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#150

Post by maemilius »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #145
taco_emoji wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even inline? Blah vs. Blah

Note that your CSS example is longer and requires combining two different syntaxes. And for one change, the difference in length and complexity is much more apparent. > Blah vs. > Blah Which is easier to remember? Which is more obvious at a glance?

The former. The problem is just that you've learned what the latter means better than the former. I'm the opposite.

Plus, the former is an absolute value where the latter is not, as far as I've been able to tell. I know that first span will always be 10pt font. I have no idea what "2" even means in this context.

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