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In the course of creating many HTML pages I stumbled several times over the fact that linkage to external script files is different from linkage to any other external resource. while all other resources make use of the empty <link> element, the <script> element requires a separate, non-empty pair of tags to link to an external script file. Linking to external style sheets has the same semantics as linking to external script files (libraries), but this is currently not reflected by the peculiar use of the <script> tag. I suggest to homogenize linkage of external files by endorsing an additional value for the "rel" attribute of the <link> element: "script". Axel Dahmen www.axeldahmen.de
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: I agree that it is poor design, but we can't remove the existing method, and adding other ways to do something that's already possible tends to just make the platform more complicated and buggy rather than making it easier for authors. So as much as I agree that the Web would be better if it had been designed differently, this is really something we just have to live with, because the cost of "fixing" it would be prohibitive.
I disagree. In HTML there are already many things (e.g. tags) all doubling or tripling functionality. Introducing a new rel attribute value will open a way to set things right. The bad designed <script src=".."> construct can be tagged deprecated, so it is still valid to use it until it becomes obsolete. You have deprecated many tags in HTML5. Why do these feel more appropriate than above suggestion? There shouldn't be double standards.
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: There are indeed redundant features in HTML, but they are all problems with the language, not designs we should copy. We haven't deprecated anything in HTML5, and the things we have obsoleted were not obsoleted in favour of newer features that did the same thing. Anyway, given how widespread <script src=""> is, there's just no way we'd ever get rid of it.
Nothing is holding you from adding an alternative option in addition to the script tag. Introducing such alternative would give a decision to developers to use the homogenized version after all. No one would be forced to use *any* of both alternatives, BUT perhaps in the end, the homogenized version will become a standard. Don't forget that you have deprecated the "language" attribute of the <script> element in favour of the "type" attribute. You wouldn't have had to do this, either. It has been done for the same reason I mentioned. I don't see why the other option was more important than the one I have suggested.