[whatwg] Section 3.3.3.2 Attribute value normalization and title attributes

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:18 AM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> I don't really see why the minor difficulties in the XML syntax would
> affect the semantics here. Could you elaborate on your concern? What
> problem would changing this solve?

The spec already indicates caution about newlines in title attributes:
"Caution is advised with respect to the use of newlines in title
attributes." It's a bit of a red flag to note warnings like this into
the spec. I.e. features that one is encouraged not to use. Best to
take them out, I think. It would save some grief if newlines were
simply prohibited in title attributes, and were normalized to spaces
if they did appear. The concern is that both human authors and
machines pretty printing the HTML are going to insert line breaks
where they don't actually want them.

That said, this is a minor and picky detail. I'm sure it will cause
some pain as is, but likely so would the alternative. Itg won't be a
major disaster if it stays as is.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo at ibiblio.org