[whatwg] <output> and onforminput

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#scopeResolution
>>>
>>> Which is a slightly spurious piece of spec, since the scope resolution
>>> has not been standardised before despite what the text implies, and
>>> this is not backwards compatible with legacy browsers, despite what
>>> the whole point of the WHATWG spec is supposed to be.
>>
>> Which browsers _don't_ do this?
>
> You may want to talk to other people in the organisation you work for.
> Since Opera 6 is just such a UA.

Just to be clear, the WHATWG members intend for _new_ browsers to be able
to implement Web Forms 2, with special consideration being made for one
particular browser, IE6, due to its large market share.

Browsers with negligible market share that will be obsoleted by new
releases that support Web Forms 2 are only a concern in terms of making
sure that WF2 content degrades reasonably in such browsers, much like
CSS specifications ensure that they degrade well in non-CSS UAs.

If we were targetting the smallest common denominator, it would be some
old version of Lynx. No scripting, no styling, no DOM: there would be very
little point trying to develop a spec that authors could write Web
Applications with in such a context.


>> Where does it imply that this has ever been standardised?
>
> It does little but cite 2 specifications to say how it should work,
> this suggests that the behaviour is well known and standardised.

It only quotes one specification, and states quite explicitly that that
reference is only for finding more details on a particular term
("activation objects"). I really don't see how it implies anything about
this being standardised before. If it was already standardised, why would
this specification need to say anything about it? (Mind you, I really wish
it _had_ been standardised, given that pages depend on this behaviour.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'