[whatwg] finding a number...

[Henri Sivonen]

On Dec 13, 2006, at 08:32, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

>> How can this be dealt with without making the parsing dependent on  
>> lang and requiring the UAs to implement all-encompassing CLDR- 
>> aware number parsing?
>
> It can't. But why bother making a standard that so clearly fails to  
> work in major world languages? Everything should be as simple as  
> possible *and no simpler* - this is too simple. Maybe assuming you  
> can parse numbers out of text is just a dumb idea as a normative  
> part of a spec.

The attributes always work for any language. For English, the  
textContent works as a *bonus*. It isn't that the spec fails to work  
for non-English. It is just that a particular *redundant* bonus  
feature doesn't work for non-English.

If giving redundant bonus features to English-language pages is  
deemed politically too incorrect, I'd rather get rid of the  
textContent stuff than introduce the huge can of worms language- 
dependent number parsing.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/