This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 7211 - define "positive integer" and use it consistently, instead of "non-negative integer greater than zero"
Summary: define "positive integer" and use it consistently, instead of "non-negative i...
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: NE
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-08-04 10:44 UTC by Michael[tm] Smith
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:48 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Michael[tm] Smith 2009-08-04 10:44:12 UTC 
The spec should define what a "positive integer" is, and use that term consistently instead of "non-negative integer greater than zero".

Rationale:

In, for example, the section on the col element, the spec states that the value of the span content attribute "must be a valid non-negative integer greater than zero". There are a number of other instances of constraints on the values of  content attributes being expressed as "non-negative integer greater than zero".

However, in a couple of other places in the spec, the term "positive integer" is used, but never defined.

FWIW, the datatype-checking code in validator.nu has both a "non-negative integer" datatype and a "positive integer" datatype, and most any other implementation would also. So it would seem to make some sense for the spec to align more closely with the implementations.
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-09-09 06:13:18 UTC 
I couldn't find any occurrances of "positive" that weren't defined.
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-09-09 06:17:51 UTC 
There is no term "non-negative integer greater than zero". There's just the term "non-negative integer", and sometimes something has to be one of those, and simultaneously greater than zero. I don't really see much point in introducing yet another term just for that case.

I don't want to use the word "positive" for the term because it's not immediately clear if that includes or excludes zero.
Comment 3 Michael[tm] Smith 2009-09-09 06:38:26 UTC 
I raised this just as a suggestion for improvement and I don't feel strongly that any change is absolutely necessary. So the WONTFIX resolution on this is OK by me.
Comment 4 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 14:48:44 UTC 
This bug predates the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.

If you are satisfied with the resolution of this bug, 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

This bug is now being moved to VERIFIED. Please respond within two weeks. If this bug is not closed, reopened or escalated within two weeks, it may be marked as NoReply and will no longer be considered a pending comment.