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some, but not all of the rule formulations in XHR are based on an undocumented 'switch' convention, that, without further explanation, allows ambiguous interpretation: for example, in 4.7.7 appears the following: ↪ Once the whole response entity body has been received ↪ If there is no response entity body and the state is LOADING ↪ If there is no response entity body and the synchronous flag is set Switch to the DONE state. if I rephrase this as: ↪ If A ↪ If B ↪ If C Then X then which of the following is meant by the above convention? #1 If A && B && C then X then break from switch #2 If A && B && C then X then fall through to next rule #3 If A || B || C then X then break from switch #4 If A || B || C then X then fall through to next rule any of these are possible interpretations given the lack of an explanation of this convention [i note that this convention also appears in HTML5 drafts and is also not documented there either]
Maybe get it changed first in HTML?
(In reply to comment #1) > Maybe get it changed first in HTML? that would work for me (i.e., define in HTML then put a reference in XHR to that definition); btw, which of #1 through #4 is the intended interpretation? i still do now know how it is intended to be interpreted...
It's #3, which is consistent with how <dl> is defined, but that is probably not quite enough.
Ian, any ideas?
I think this is now a pretty common convention and sufficiently clear that it needs no further explanation. If it needs explanation, that explanation doesn't belong in XHR as it's a convention shared by lots of specs.
So I don't like you closing these bugs. Should we get a separate WHATWG XMLHttpRequest component? There's an outstanding question in comment 4 and there's indeed room for confusion, even though we use the pattern a lot.
No problem - I won't resolve more bugs (unless by prior agreement with you). I think the basic point still stands - why should this convention be defined in the XHR spec when used by lots of others too? - so perhaps we should move this bug to another component or something. (Do we have a "meta-spec" about spec markup?)
(In reply to Hallvord R. M. Steen from comment #7) > No problem - I won't resolve more bugs (unless by prior agreement with you). > I think the basic point still stands - why should this convention be defined > in the XHR spec when used by lots of others too? - so perhaps we should move > this bug to another component or something. (Do we have a "meta-spec" about > spec markup?) I agree that it would be better to document this convention in the HTML spec and refer to that definition from XHR.
Isn't the last part of http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/introduction.html#typographic-conventions sufficiently clear? Shall we add a new paragraph to section 3 Terminology saying "This specification uses the same typographic conventions as [HTML5]."? That should be sufficient to close this bug - if Anne agrees this time ;)
Glenn, is that clear enough?
(In reply to Anne from comment #10) > Glenn, is that clear enough? Yes, Thanks.
So, there's agreement to s/WebAppsWG/HTMLWG/ and s/XHR/HTML5/?
(In reply to Art Barstow from comment #12) > So, there's agreement to s/WebAppsWG/HTMLWG/ and s/XHR/HTML5/? I will open a new bug against HTML5, rather than relabeling this bug. The action on this bug is to reference HTML5 conventions.
https://github.com/whatwg/xhr/commit/740a409e37321b411bee782fae28224559863e64