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Bug 8462 - "fetch the resulting absolute URL"
Summary: "fetch the resulting absolute URL"
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
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Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-12-08 16:19 UTC by Julian Reschke
Modified: 2010-10-04 13:58 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

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Description Julian Reschke 2009-12-08 16:19:54 UTC
"4.8.5 The object element

...

If that is successful, fetch the resulting absolute URL,..."

This should say "...fetch the resource identified by the resulting..." (according to the definition of 'fetch').
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-06 10:44:33 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: Partially Accepted
Change Description: see diff given below
Rationale: The terminology is used all over the place, so I just changed the "fetch" algorithm to allow it to be used with either a resource or a URL.
Comment 2 contributor 2010-01-06 10:45:48 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4518.
Check-in comment: make 'fetch' support being called with a URL, since that is what the spec does all over the place anyway.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4517&to=4518
Comment 3 Julian Reschke 2010-01-06 10:52:24 UTC
You just made things even more confusing. URLs are identifiers. The result of "fetching" an identifier isn't the same thing as fetching what it identifies (there's a difference in the levels of indirection).

Please undo, and just make the spec consistent.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-06 11:05:24 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: Nonsense, people talk about fetching URLs all the time, it's not confusing at all.
Comment 5 Julian Reschke 2010-01-06 11:09:41 UTC
The purpose of a spec is not to mirror the language that "people use" (which is acceptable to be sloppy), but to be consistent internally, consistent with other specs, and precise.
 
Comment 6 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-06 11:21:25 UTC
No, the purpose of a spec is to set out what should happen in such a way that interoperability is achieved. It could be sloppy and inconsistent and completely intelligible, if that happened to be the way to get interoperability (it rarely is). In this particular instance, however, it is self-consistent, unambiguous, and consistent with numerous specs (just not some that happen to themselves be ambiguous and confusing in their terminology use).