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Bug 8828 - definition of "plugin"
Summary: definition of "plugin"
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-01-27 12:48 UTC by Julian Reschke
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:49 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Julian Reschke 2010-01-27 12:48:23 UTC 
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#plugins:

"The term plugin is used to mean any content handler for Web content types that are either not supported by the user agent natively or that do not expose a DOM, which supports rendering the content as part of the user agent's interface."

Questions:

1) What is a "Web content type"?

2) What does "natively" mean?

3) "do not expose a DOM": that seems to make the content handler for JPGs a 
plugin, right?
Comment 1 Anne 2010-02-02 15:04:43 UTC 
3) seems wrong because JPG is handled by the UA natively.
Comment 2 Julian Reschke 2010-02-02 15:12:26 UTC 
(In reply to comment #1)
> 3) seems wrong because JPG is handled by the UA natively.

Hard to say without a definition of "natively" :-)
Comment 3 Anne 2010-02-02 15:15:48 UTC 
Right...
Comment 4 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-02-02 23:18:08 UTC 
(In reply to comment #1)
> 3) seems wrong because JPG is handled by the UA natively.
> 

Certainly JPGs are not what most people are thinking of when they say "plugin", but they do seem to be included by the definition.
Comment 5 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-14 09:36:03 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: I've attempted to make the definition more self-consistent.

It's possible for a plugin to support JPG types, yes. More common is for browsers to natively support SVG or PDF yet have that support fall into the "plugin" definition. Really the only effect is whether <embed> can display the content or not.
Comment 6 contributor 2010-02-14 09:36:26 UTC 
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4725.
Check-in comment: Try to define 'plugin' better.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4724&to=4725
Comment 7 Julian Reschke 2010-02-17 15:30:19 UTC 
Posted a reply in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0597.html - this may need more work.