[whatwg] finding a number...

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:17:14 +0530, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi> wrote:

> 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.

The problem with this is that it means copying code the natural way  
doesn't work for some non-english speakers, and they have to read the spec  
or guess why. And that you therefore aren't really handling the Web as  
people actually write it, just some part of it

> 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.

Up to you guys...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
   Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
chaals at opera.com          Try Opera 9 now! http://opera.com