[whatwg] Various attributes

[Jim Ley]

maxlength - what happens when maxlength is shorter than the minimum length
required to express the document type (e.g. type="tel" maxlength="1") should
the form never be submitted, should this restriction be ignored, or should
all restrictions be ignored, or what?

Why require the ^ and $ in the regexp, what's the point in the restriction?

Overriding title to include the expected format as well as the normal
accessibility uses is incompatible (because the resulting "... could cause
the UA to display an alert such as:" will likely not make sense with the
relevant normal use of title in it.

Why doesn't the required attribute apply to check-box's (use case"do you
agree to the terms and conditions?")

form attribute:
"A form attribute that specifies an ID that occurs multiple times in a
document should select the same form as would be selected by the
getElementById() method for that ID ([DOM3CORE])"

DOM3 core says:
"If more than one element has an ID attribute with that value, what is
returned is undefined. "

I'm not sure of the point of referencing another spec simply to say the
behaviour is undefined, why not say it straight?  Or are you trying to say
something else?

autocomplete:  the MUST restriction on off not pre-filling is too
restrictive, what is the motivation of this?  SHOULD is more appropriate.
Since users may want to always want to pre-fill such data, especially in
AT's where entering information is considerably more expensive for the user
than the form designer may envisage.  (whilst you state the autocomplete is
required by banks, it's also a simple fact that it's easy to override the
behaviour in common user agents such as IE+AT so the SHOULD is more
appropriate)

autofocus - this is incompatible with basically accessibility (, MUST is
definately inappropraite (generally almost all the MUST's in the document
are ones I would not accept in a user agent)
"In the following snippet, the text field would be focussed when the
document was loaded."  please define "document was loaded" does this mean
the onload event fired for the document root element, or does it mean the
input element was rendered - in which case does two autofocussed elements
mean a cascade as each is rendered?  None of this is acceptable to me, a
preferred approach would be what is often implemented by more competent
scripters - that of "if onload no form elements have been modified, and
there's the ability to set focus then focus is set to an element in the
form, I would like this to go further such that no keys had been pressed or
other elements given focus etc. that is normally beyond even the reasonable
scope.

Jim.