[whatwg] [wf2] 2.3. Changes to existing controls

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>
> Quoting Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch>:
> > I don't understand any of the above. Could you explain it again? I really
> > don't know what you are trying to say.
> 
> You should probably try harder ;-) Anyway, setting |value=""| on a form 
> control should not result in the DOM attribute value being "on". It 
> should result in it being "" and that should be submitted.

Ok. I agree with this. However, you go on to say:

> (Sections 2.3 and 2.4 have to be edited for this.)

I don't see anything in either 2.3 or 2.4 that contradicts what you said 
above. This is why I was confused earlier, I guess. The bits you quoted in 
your earlier mails agreed with what you were saying should happen, and 
then you said they should change...

Are you confusing "value content attribute not specified" with the 
unrelated "no value selected"?

I suppose the following sentence (in 2.4):

| For example, radio buttons often cannot be returned to their "no value 
| selected" state.

...could be considered to be incorrect given that a radio button can be 
checked even when its value is ""; is that what you are referring to?


> > > > > Could you add a note that there is some form of normalization 
> > > > > applied to these attributes in XML documents as described here: 
> > > > > <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#AVNormalize>. This could be 
> > > > > helpful and would prevent confusion.
> > > > 
> > > > That XML rule only applies to validating parsers and to parsers 
> > > > exposed to internal subsets, IIRC.
> > > 
> > > Let me quote:
> > > 
> > > # Before the value of an attribute is passed to the application
> > > # or checked for validity, the XML processor MUST normalize the
> > > # attribute value by applying the algorithm below
> > > 
> > > (Also, internal subsets are required to be supported by XML 
> > > parsers.)
> > 
> > I don't see how this contradicts what I wrote.
> 
> It does not. Sorry about that. I just want to make it clear that XML has 
> some stupid rules authors should be aware about when dealing with forms. 
> This seemed like the most appropriate place to add the note.

I don't see how these rules will affect users unless they go out of their 
way to make DTDs, in which case they deserve whatever they get.

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