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Bug 8628 - The term "boolean attribute" gives readers wrong ideas
Summary: The term "boolean attribute" gives readers wrong ideas
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 All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
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Reported: 2010-01-04 13:30 UTC by Henri Sivonen
Modified: 2010-10-04 13:54 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

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Description Henri Sivonen 2010-01-04 13:30:13 UTC 
From author behavior, it seems that the term "boolean attributes" makes people assume that "boolean attributes" take values "true" and "false". This is bad, because setting a boolean attribute to "false" means setting it to true.

Please use a different term, e.g. "flag attribute" (credit: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20100104#l-218).
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-11 11:42:21 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: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20100111#l-392