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Bug 8145 - Unclear: "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser characters one *string* at a time." Better: "one character at a time"?
Summary: Unclear: "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser char...
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: LC
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: 2009-11-02 02:02 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:33 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2009-11-02 02:02:33 UTC 
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#parsing-xhtml-documents

Comment:
Unclear: "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser characters one *string* at a time." Better: "one character at a time"?

Posted from: 84.160.114.216
Comment 1 Hans Ulrich Niedermann 2009-11-04 10:00:18 UTC 
Current text:

    "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser
     characters one *string* at a time."

Possible alternatives:

    "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser
     characters one at a time."

    "Certain algorithms in this specification spoon-feed the parser
     one character at a time."

In many languages and systems, characters are components of strings, so feeding characters "string by string" does not make sense.
Comment 2 Henri Sivonen 2009-11-04 10:37:50 UTC 
document.write() takes a string at a time.
Comment 3 Henri Sivonen 2009-11-04 11:50:24 UTC 
Please disregard my previous comment. I confused this spoon feeding with another instance of spoon feeding in the spec.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-12-19 02:19:40 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: no spec change
Rationale: The algorithms in fact feed the parser string-by-string. Strings consist of characters, so it is correct to say that characters are fed string-by-string.

It's like saying that you can only eat peas one pea at a time. That's clearly wrong; You can spood-feed peas one spoon at a time, or spoon-feed a baby milliliters of baby food one spoon at a time, even if the spoon is bigger than one pea or one milliliter.