- From: Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:07:50 -0500
- To: Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com>
- Cc: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com> wrote: > The primary remaining rationale for having a version indicator is that > we might find such a version indicator useful in the future (even > though we agree that this eventuality is unlikely). I don't understand this rationale. Suppose we decide we want HTML6 to be backward-incompatible -- i.e., to allow authors to create documents that legacy UAs will simply reject, rather than processing them incorrectly. Why can't we just make up something then to achieve that? For instance, use a different file extension and MIME type. Or require that the first four characters be "<!--", and that HTML6 UAs ignore any content before the first "<!--", so anything prior can be used as fallback. It seems like an explicit version indicator now would give only slight benefit over the status quo, even *if* breaking compatibility were ever necessary (which seems extremely unlikely). We should make sure that we'd be able to deal with extremely unlikely future scenarios, but we don't have to be able to do so elegantly.
Received on Sunday, 21 February 2010 22:08:18 UTC