[whatwg] Spec review results I

[Jens Meiert]

Since currently reviewing and proof-reading the HTML 5 spec draft
(again) I'm feeling free to send (rather non-technical) /suggestions/
and eventual typos to this list. This tiny first part refers to CVS
revision 1.904 [1].

* Please drop "or the idea that the working group should even spend
time discussing the concept of that section" as this is unnecessarily
judgmental.

* Change order of change history locations [2] (inverting the order
seems to make sense to put more emphasis on CVS/SVN access than on
Twitter).

* Remove emphasis from "This" in "This specification aims to extend
HTML so that it is also suitable in these contexts" [3] (and probably
use "The HTML 5 specification" instead of "This") as this
unnecessarily seems to judge XHTML 2.

* Better write "HTML documents do not exist in a vacuum. This section
…" instead of "HTML documents do not exist in a vacuum — this section
…" [4].

* In the same section [4] it might be fine to drop the first half of
the Language Syntax description, "All of these features would be for
naught if they couldn't be represented in a serialized form and sent
to other people, and so …".

* Add a period behind "etc" (many occurrences), as I Merriam-Webster
[5] and Wikipedia [6] seem to confirm ("Typically, the abbreviated
versions should always be followed by a full stop").

* In the conformance section [7], "if errors have been so preserved"
might be rephrased to "if errror have been preserved this way" or the
like (not too sure about it, but the current phrase sounded strange to
my non-native ears).

* Please simplify the "Unless otherwise specified …" exception notes
[8] as there is a lot of redundancy.


[1] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904
[2] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904#status
[3] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904#relationship0
[4] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904#structure
[5] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/etc
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera
[7] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904#conformance
[8] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/spec/Overview.html?rev=1.904#common

-- 
Jens Meiert
http://meiert.com/en/