Re: Cleaning House

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Jim Jewett wrote:
> > 
> > Why does the size of the spec matter?
> 
> Because more complicated specs lead to more bugs.

Actually it seems that shorter (vaguer) specs (like CSS2) lead to more 
bugs than more detailed, precise specs (like CSS2.1).


> > Surely the benefit to authors far, far outweigh the benefits to the 
> > spec community?
> 
> Not in this case.
> 
> I see some value (at least for future authors) in a simpler language 
> specification.  I see very little value in many of the optionally 
> omitted tags.

I see great value in allowing for certain tags to be omitted. It makes the 
language far easier to write.


> Are there really very many documents which leave out the body tag, but 
> are otherwise valid?

I don't have that data. It's hard to draw any conclusions from valid 
documents, though, since are so few of them.


> My point is that it really isn't that important whether a comment is at 
> the very end of the body, or immediately after the body -- and it so it 
> isn't worth a special exception in the element definition.

I disagree, but I suppose it is a matter of opinion.


> Since browsers are already doing error correction on 95%+ of pages 
> anyhow, that doesn't even need to affect the way pages are viewed.  It 
> just simplifies the model of what it takes to be valid.

It just means that there would be more errors for authors to worry about.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'