[whatwg] Repetition model changes

[Matthew Raymond]

Ian Hickson wrote:
>>    Note that I left off repeat-start because the default value is one.
>>So why exactly do we need repeat-start???
> 
> Because on the long run, people may want to either only support WF2 UAs
> (much the same way as, e.g., GMail only supports UAs that do
> XmlHttpRequest) or may wish to only provide basic functionality to legacy
> clients, with WF2 clients having a better experience.

    If, on a website supports non-WF2 UAs, the webmaster wants a preset 
number of items, the webmaster has to create a mechanism that will 
generate non-template blocks for each item (except for the template 
itself as the last item). The webmaster also has to ensure that the 
template isn't generated at all they want a list with zero empty items. 
  This means that the repeat-start mechanism does not degrade gracefully 
for non-WF2 clients.

    (By the way, does this mean that WF2 clients won't even see an empty 
row if repeat-start="0"? I would hope that there's a way to suppress 
template rendering in a client that supports Web Forms 2.0.)

    It would seem to me that webmasters would either not use 
repeat-start at all or require all users to have WF2-compliant UAs. Does 
this mean that WHAT WG will consider features of a similar nature? 
(Note: The following are not actual feature suggestions.) Why not have 
two templates, or even three:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    <table><tbody>
      <tr id="order" repeat="template" repeat-start="3">
        <td><input type="text" name="row[order].product" value=""></td>
        <td><input type="text" name="row[order].quantity" value="1"></td>
      </tr>
      <tr id="genus" repeat="template" repeat-start="2">
        <td><input type="text" name="grow[genus].product" value=""></td>
        <td>
          <input type="text" name="grow[genus].quantity" value="2">
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr id="species" repeat="template" repeat-start="5">
       <td><input type="text" name="srow[species].product" value=""></td>
       <td>
         <input type="text" name="srow[species].quantity" value="3">
       </td>
      </tr>
    </tbody></table>

    <p><button type="add" template="order" value="order">
      Add Order Row
    </button></p>
    <p><button type="add" template="genus" value="genus">
      Add Genus Row
    </button></p>
    <p><button type="add" template="species" value="species">
      Add Species Row
    </button></p>
    <p><button type="submit">Submit</button></p>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Same bloody thing. Renders properly only in a WF2 client. Requires 
webmasters to pretty much chuck WF2 out the window in order to support 
the same thing on non-WF2 clients. People could still create WF2 web 
pages that degrade gracefully by avoiding such features, but the above 
clearly will not degrade gracefully.

    So if such things are allowed, we can do this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    <table>
     <tload href="myTableMarkup.html" />
    </table>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Sure it doesn't render anything on a non-WF2 client, but who cares, 
cause webmasters are only going to use it if they require Web Forms 2.0 
compliant browsers. Do you see the slippery slope here?