[whatwg] <font>

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 06:48 +1000 UTC, on 2007-05-03, Adrian Sutton wrote:

> On 3/5/07 2:23 AM, "Sander Tekelenburg" <st at isoc.nl> wrote:

[HTML -> PDF converters ignore CSS]

>> OK. Real world issues. But that doesn't mean that the HTML spec is the place
>> to fix those. Looks more like an opportunity for beter PDF generators to
>>grab
>> market share and for IE to fix security bugs.
>
> Well sure you can ignore the real world if you like, I'm just letting you
> know what's currently happening.

Which I very much appreciate. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

> If the spec chooses to ignore that then
> it's gambling on the fact that implementors care more about being spec
> compliant than making things work for their clients.

I don't think we need look at it in such a dramatic way. While some people
may 'need' <font> because their HTML -> PDF converter ignores CSS, I imagine
they'd much rather have a HTML -> PDF converter that *does* support CSS. That
would give them much more control over their final product after all.

Now if there is something about the HTML spec that stands in the way of
HTML->PDF converters to support CSS, that would logically be something to try
to fix in the HTML spec. But otherwise I don't see why HTML should try to
solve it, or even how it *could*. Authors can generate <font> already anyway.
Their document just won't be conforming. What would those authors win by
<font> being conforming? And then what about the rest of their problems?
Because if their problem is their tool ignores CSS, they'll likely need much
more presentational HTML than just <font>.

And while we add all that presentational HTML to the spec, some enterprising
hacker builds a HTML->PDF converter that has CSS support -- we'll have a spec
allowing things we didn't really want to allow and for which there's not even
a use case anymore.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>