[whatwg] WA1: <meta> attribute requirements

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Tue Jul 19 05:47:49 PDT 2005


On Tue, 19 Jul 2005, fantasai wrote:
> 
> Unless you are going to provide a method that automatically adds all the 
> orphaned node's required attributes and children upon creation, you 
> cannot avoid an intermediate state in which the node does not fulfill 
> its conformance requirements.

The idea is to only require conformance of fragments when no scripts are 
executing (i.e. the intermediate steps occur in between scripts 
executing). Kornel Lesinski raised some interesting issues with that 
off-list, which I shall be examining when I next work on the conformance 
section.


> My point is, your argument that "requiring the 'name' attribute on <meta>
> would make a script-created <meta> element non-conformant upon creation,
> so therefore it should not be a required attribute" applies equally to any
> other similar requirement you place on any other element.

I didn't say "upon creation".


> If that is your argument for why the 'name' attribute should not be 
> required, then you must also argue that, for the same reason, no other 
> element should have a required attribute or child -- else you are being 
> inconsistent in your logic.

You may notice that very few elements and attributes in HTML5 at the 
moment are required. This is not entirely coincidental.

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



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