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Bug 9356 - Presumably "Errors that encourage a correct understanding of the spec" should read "an incorrect" instead of "a correct".
Summary: Presumably "Errors that encourage a correct understanding of the spec" should...
Status: CLOSED FIXED
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: 2010-03-28 02:43 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-04 13:56 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2010-03-28 02:43:31 UTC 
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#restrictions-on-the-content-model-and-on-attribute-values

Comment:
Presumably "Errors that encourage a correct understanding of the spec" should
read "an incorrect" instead of "a correct".

Posted from: 68.175.61.233
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-04-02 06:29:52 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: No, it's intended as written. The errors — by virtue of being caught and brought to the author's attention — encourage a correct understanding. If they were not errors, then an incorrect understanding would be allowed to continue, leading to real problems later.
Comment 2 Aryeh Gregor 2010-04-02 16:54:10 UTC 
Well, this is just stylistic, so I won't object if you reclose.  But you're using the word "Errors" inconsistently in the section headings here, and it confused me on first reading.  Some of them use "error" to mean "the use of erroneous markup by authors" (e.g., "Errors that can result in infoset coercion"), while others use "error" to mean "error report by a validator" or "the fact that the spec declares something an error" or something (e.g., this one).

It would be clearer if you only used the former, since that's what "error" normally means: an erroneous action, not a declaration of error.  Or you could just reword to not use "errors" in the headings.

In this particular case it seemed like you were saying that authors' commission of errors encouraged correct understanding of the spec.  I assumed that you meant their errors would be read by other authors copy-pasting markup, and encourage those other authors to interpret the spec incorrectly.
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-04-12 22:08:52 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: Accepted
Change Description: see diff given below
Rationale: Concurred with reporter's comments.
Comment 4 contributor 2010-04-12 22:09:15 UTC 
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4999.
Check-in comment: Try to be more consistent about the use of the word 'error'.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4998&to=4999