- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:00:41 -0800
- To: Philip TAYLOR <Philip-and-LeKhanh@royal-tunbridge-wells.org>
- Cc: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 3:55 AM, Philip TAYLOR <Philip-and-LeKhanh@royal-tunbridge-wells.org> wrote: > Anne van Kesteren wrote: > >> Rather, the question is why this specification needs to be normative given >> that it contains the same information as the HTML 5 specification already >> does. > > Is the simple answer to this question not just > "because if it is non-normative, it is of no use" ? So would you say that the documents Dan and Lachlan have produced is of no use since they are informative? > If I, as a professional webmaster, need to know how > I must express myself in HTML 5 in order for my > document(s) to be valid, there is no point my looking > at a document that is simply informative Really? Does the same thing apply for other languages that you author content for? If you were to write a C program, would you go to the ANSI C99 spec? Or would you pick up a book or read a web tutorial. When you write a perl program, do you read the Pod documentation, or do you go read the perl source code (which as far as I can tell is the only thing resembling a spec for Perl5-) In my experience only experts in a language ever go look at the specification. They are simply too detailed to give non-experts enough of a high-level view that the information can be consumed. Non-experts tend to go to other resources that provides easier-to-consume information. / Jonas
Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 19:01:22 UTC