In particular, the link above defines it as "When an element's root element is the root element of a Document object".  But http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/apis-in-html-documents.html#apis-in-html-documents talks about "in HTML documents" when it clearly means "when the ownerDocument of the element is an HTML document".  

The spec really needs to be consistent about whether it means "the document the element is actually in" (which might be null) or "the element's ownerDocument" (never null).

As things stand, for example, I can't tell which of the two meanings is meant at http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/urls.html#reflect when talking about attributes of type HTMLElement.

When it means the definition at the top of comment 1, it's hyperlinked to the definition, so that should help clarify the meaning of the case mentioned at the bottom of comment 1.

Any suggestion as to better wording for one or both of these?

I think that when you mean "the ownerDocument is an HTML document" you should say it exactly that way.  ;)

For the other, perhaps make the phrase "in a document tree" (and keep the linkage)?

mass-move component to LC1

(In reply to comment #3)
> I think that when you mean "the ownerDocument is an HTML document" you should
> say it exactly that way.  ;)

Yeah, but that's kinda verbose, and many of the places where this occurs are already pretty wordy, and many of the rest don't lend themselves to that phraseology. :-/


> For the other, perhaps make the phrase "in a document tree" (and keep the
> linkage)?

I think that's a step backwards actually, because an orphan subtree is still a kind of "document tree" (or "document object model tree"), just not one with a Document node at the top. So it wouldn't really clarify things IMHO.


Looking at this more closely, it seems every occurrence of referencing "HTML Documents" to mean ownerDocuments that have the HTML flavour of the APIs has a hyperlink, and every occurrence of "in a Document" meaning "is the descendant of a Document object" is also hyperlinked, and the remainder aren't actually cases of "in a document" so much as cases of the possessive form of Document used in the context of a Node or content attribute, in which case the meaning is that of ownerDocument.

I think a general fix is going to be impractical here.

There are still some specific cases that might be confusing (e.g. where I haven't used quite the same consistent terminology). I suggest raising those as individual cases (either here or in other bugs) so that we can improve them specifically. Would that be sufficient?

If you think a general approach would be better, could you give specific examples of how you'd fix a dozen or so of the cases you're worried about, to show me that I'm wrong about it being impractical?

This bug is no longer valid now this moved to DOM Core I think. Is there anything besides that obsolete section that used this incorrectly?

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Status: Did Not Understand Request
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: see comment 5 and comment 6

Fwiw, what was really needed here is someone to go through uses of "in an HTML Document" and make sure they all made sense.  It sounds like Ian has done that, so things are fine....

What has been done is that a section that relies on this concept heavily moved to DOM Core. Other than that I am not so sure.