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Bug 12918 - I found that you limited the keywords acceptable for the meta-name attribute and for the link-rel attribute. In the specs you use exhaustive lists of allowed keywords. In my opinion you should only suggest keywords. See also http://webhel.blogspot.com/20
Summary: I found that you limited the keywords acceptable for the meta-name attribute ...
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LC1 HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
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: 2011-06-08 20:44 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2011-08-04 05:34 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2011-06-08 20:44:51 UTC 
Specification: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#top

Comment:
I found that you limited the keywords acceptable for the meta-name attribute
and for the link-rel attribute. In the specs you use exhaustive lists of
allowed keywords. In my opinion you should only suggest keywords. See also 
http://webhel.blogspot.com/2011/06/bad-value-for-attribute-name-on-element.htm
l 

Hope you will change this. 

Thanks and best regards,
Hans


Posted from: 82.168.147.190
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534.24 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.696.77 Safari/534.24
Comment 1 Henri Sivonen 2011-06-10 07:51:49 UTC 
I'm curious: Why did you rather blog and file a bug than look up the specs for the keywords you were using and edit the meta name registry to register the keywords?

Was the error message not clear enough about the registration possibility? If the W3C validator had given the same message wording that Validotor.nu ( http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.helenahoeve.nl%2F ) gives now, you have registered the keywords yourself.

I'm trying to understand why the registration mechanism isn't working as designed.

That the validator whines about name="language" is actually good, since you should be using <html lang=nl> instead.

I registered rel=P3Pv1 for you.

I'm curious: Why do you have a DC.title that's different from HTML <title>? Why isn't HTML <title> enough?

As for the various alternatives for expressing the geographic location, I encourage you to find specs that define those keywords *as HTML meta keywords* and then to register they keywords with the links to the specs on meta keyword registry wiki page linked from the validator error messages. I tried doing this for you, but while I realize that WGS84 is the name of a coordinate scheme, I didn't find any spec detailing the use or processing of <meta name=WGS84>. Registrations require references to specs that define the keyword *as an HTML meta keyword* to prevent propagating cargo-cult keywords.
Comment 2 Hans 2011-06-10 20:20:46 UTC 
Sorry that I was not clear enough. It is okay that there is a wiki where you might find the meaning of a keyword.

The problem with the suggested mechanism is that the content of a tag (i.e. the meta tag) is part of the HTML5 standard. That is curious in my opinion.

When there is a company with a big name comes with a new keyword (=content) it will probably be accepted soon. However when a small company comes with a new keyword, all websites which use this content does not follow the HTML5 standard. That's very strange in my opinion.

The HTML standard should deal with tags, not with the content. 

When I created the website I used some content which may be outdated today. No problem with that. Updating the website is easy enough. 

I understand that it make sense for the meta tag to describe how the keywords should be interpreted. As time flows by the used keywords will change. I think it doesn´t make sense to change the HTML5 standard everytime a keyword changes. By making the wiki part of the standard this will be the case. Isn´t it better that in the HTML5 standard you only suggest the use of the meta keywords as mentioned on the wiki?
Comment 3 Henri Sivonen 2011-06-13 07:36:04 UTC 
(In reply to comment #2)
> Sorry that I was not clear enough. It is okay that there is a wiki where you
> might find the meaning of a keyword.

The spec can be published on a wiki, sure.

> The problem with the suggested mechanism is that the content of a tag (i.e. the
> meta tag) is part of the HTML5 standard. That is curious in my opinion.

That HTML5 presumptively claims all meta keywords (and then relaxing that claim a bit) is about as curious as HTML5 presumptively claiming all attribute names (and then relaxing that claim a bit).

> When there is a company with a big name comes with a new keyword (=content) it
> will probably be accepted soon. However when a small company comes with a new
> keyword, all websites which use this content does not follow the HTML5
> standard. That's very strange in my opinion.

Do you have any evidence of big and small companies getting a different treatment in the registries?

> I understand that it make sense for the meta tag to describe how the keywords
> should be interpreted. As time flows by the used keywords will change. I think
> it doesn´t make sense to change the HTML5 standard everytime a keyword changes.
> By making the wiki part of the standard this will be the case.

Why is that a problem? Is it a problem that the "HTML5 standard" "changes" if a new language subtag for a natural language is added to the IANA language subtag registry?
Comment 4 Hans 2011-06-13 09:39:29 UTC 
(In reply to comment #3)

> Why is that a problem? Is it a problem that the "HTML5 standard" "changes" if a
> new language subtag for a natural language is added to the IANA language subtag
> registry?

The problem is pricipal: The content of a website should not be part of a standard. 

More practical. I have tried to create a modern website which is accessible and usable. For that reason I have used some meta keywords. I was very surprised to find out that the webpages did not validate due to the fact that I used apparently old fashioned keywords. I tried to follow the HTML5 standard, for example by studying the list at http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp and more specific (after discovering that the website did not validate) the meta tag reference, found at http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_meta.asp and http://www.w3schools.com/html5/att_meta_name.asp

At this last page there is a list of possible metatags, without a reference to http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions

Also at this page there is stated that "You can define your own names in a schema" for other keywords. However there is no reference to a page which instructs you how to do this.

In practice I found that at the site of Cynthia says... they still recommend the use of meta name="language". See for example: http://www.contentquality.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=2&url1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.helenahoeve.nl%2F (second row of the Priority 3 Verification Checklist). Is it there for backwards compatability? And should it be elimated in the HTML5 standard? I still have my doubts. That's why I think meta keywords should not be part of the standard.
Comment 5 Henri Sivonen 2011-06-13 12:19:41 UTC 
(In reply to comment #4)
> The problem is pricipal: The content of a website should not be part of a
> standard. 

Why not? The standard itself is published on a Web site.
 
> More practical. I have tried to create a modern website which is accessible and
> usable. For that reason I have used some meta keywords. I was very surprised to
> find out that the webpages did not validate due to the fact that I used
> apparently old fashioned keywords. I tried to follow the HTML5 standard, for
> example by studying the list at
> http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp and more specific (after
> discovering that the website did not validate) the meta tag reference, found at
> http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_meta.asp and
> http://www.w3schools.com/html5/att_meta_name.asp

Well, there's your problem. See http://w3fools.com/

> At this last page there is a list of possible metatags, without a reference to
> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions
> 
> Also at this page there is stated that "You can define your own names in a
> schema" for other keywords. However there is no reference to a page which
> instructs you how to do this.

HTML5 has no such mechanism. You'll find that the HTML5 spec references http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions but doesn't reference w3schools.
 
> In practice I found that at the site of Cynthia says... they still recommend
> the use of meta name="language". See for example:
> http://www.contentquality.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=2&url1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.helenahoeve.nl%2F
> (second row of the Priority 3 Verification Checklist). Is it there for
> backwards compatability? And should it be elimated in the HTML5 standard? I
> still have my doubts. That's why I think meta keywords should not be part of
> the standard.

This looks like a bug in Cynthia Says. If you follow the links from the Cynthia Says output, you'll see that it links to WCAG 1.0 which has been superseded by WCAG 2.0 and even the WCAG 1.0 techniques don't actually have meta name="language" in the suggested techniques.
Comment 6 Hans 2011-06-13 19:39:05 UTC 
(In reply to comment #5)

> Well, there's your problem. See http://w3fools.com/

Thank you very much, I'm glad that I'm not the only one ;-)
Comment 7 Aryeh Gregor 2011-06-24 21:47:51 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: no spec change
Rationale: As Henri describes, you can already register new keywords that you want to use on the wiki, which I think addresses your concerns.  You cannot just make up your own keywords without registering them -- if you want to make up nonstandard values, it will not validate, just like nonstandard elements won't validate.
Comment 8 Hans 2011-06-25 18:23:16 UTC 
I have give you my opinion and learned that it is possible to place a request for a new keyword at the Wiki http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions

So if anyone thinks it is necessary to register an old keyword (like language) for backward compatability with older browsers or specific browser designed for blind then it should be possible

I still don't completely understand **why** this "content" should be part of the standard. Isn't it usual that everything between two quotes is content and not part of the standard, like: title="This text is not part of the standard!"

I also think that the message given by the validator should have a reference to the wiki mentioned above.

In the end I don't have a problem with this approach of handling with keywords allthough I wonder why none of the keywords at the wiki is "Ratified"
Comment 9 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:34:46 UTC 
mass-move component to LC1