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Bug 12165 - The requirement on the plaintext element conflicts with its old definition and usage. It is better to avoid requiring any support than to require support that breaks legacy usage. The plaintext element should be regarded as undefined in HTML5.
Summary: The requirement on the plaintext element conflicts with its old definition an...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LC1 HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-02-23 20:22 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2011-08-04 05:04 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2011-02-23 20:22:03 UTC 
Specification: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/obsolete.html
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#other-elements,-attributes-and-apis

Comment:
The requirement on the plaintext element conflicts with its old definition and
usage. It is better to avoid requiring any support than to require support
that breaks legacy usage. The plaintext element should be regarded as
undefined in HTML5.

Posted from: 88.114.29.18
Comment 1 Aryeh Gregor 2011-02-23 23:58:34 UTC 
Actually, the legacy behavior of plaintext is pretty neat.  Can we make it valid?  :)
Comment 2 Aryeh Gregor 2011-03-04 02:37:40 UTC 
plaintext is treated differently by the HTML parser, as its conventional meaning requires.  See the PLAINTEXT state in the parser:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/tokenization.html#plaintext-state

A note to authors of this fact might be worthwhile, so that they don't have to look into the parser section.
Comment 3 Ms2ger 2011-03-04 11:07:39 UTC 
A note to the authors would not be worthwhile, as they should not use plaintext.
Comment 4 Aryeh Gregor 2011-03-04 17:37:05 UTC 
Okay, my bad.  It should be class=impl, sure.  But a note would still be helpful for people who run across a <plaintext> element and have no idea what crazy thing it's doing and look for <plaintext> under "Obsolete features" (which is the logical place to look for it) and find that the only mention seems to suggest it works the same as <pre>, which it clearly doesn't, so they assume it's an error in the spec and (if they're generous) file a bug report, like our good friend 88.114.29.18.  It can just be a one-sentence pointer to the parsing section.  The current spec is actively misleading, IMO.
Comment 5 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2011-05-05 22:45:06 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: see diff below
Rationale: The original comment seems incorrect to me; the requirements in the spec for <plaintext> do not contradict legacy.

I've tried to clarify all this though.
Comment 6 contributor 2011-05-05 22:45:31 UTC 
Checked in as WHATWG revision r6088.
Check-in comment: clarification
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=6087&to=6088
Comment 7 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:04:52 UTC 
mass-moved component to LC1