[whatwg] Answering the question... (timing of table headers issue)

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Aug 23, 2007, at 3:43 PM, John Foliot wrote:

>
>>> * Is Maciej Stachowiak correct when he states, "This feature is
>>> underspecified in HTML4, and not implemented by IE. It is also  
>>> likely
>>> to be dropped in HTML5 and may be removed from Mozilla and Opera  
>>> as a
>>> result." [http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15032]
>>
>> I accept "underspecified" and "likely to be dropped" as his opinion,
>> and as far as I know he's correct that it's not implemented by IE.
>
> Fair enough, but by reading this, there is no indication that it is  
> opinion,
> and is further clouded by the fact that he is making a projection  
> regarding
> 2 browser's "future" implementation/non-implementation, even though  
> he does
> not work for nor speak for either.  Failing to recognize that this  
> is a
> problem is of concern.

This isn't my advice to the WebKit developers, this is my comment on a  
bug report *as* a WebKit developer.

Is it wrong for implementors to look at past specs, other  
implementations, or the ongoing web standards process in making  
decisions on what to implement? In fact, is it even a matter that  
should be discussed on a bunch of web standards mailing lists, rather  
than in the bug tracker?

Regards,
Maciej