[whatwg] Make quoted attributes a conformance criterion

Jonas Sicking jonas at sicking.cc
Sun Jul 26 17:53:35 PDT 2009


On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Mike Shaver<mike.shaver at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 5:15 AM, Keryx Web<webmaster at keryx.se> wrote:
>> My analogy was simply this: Just like it makes sense for a JavaScript lint
>> tool to enforce semi-colons, it makes sense for an HTML conformance checker
>> to enforce quotation marks.
>
> A lint tool is not a conformance checker.  Your proposal here is
> analogous to removing ASI from ECMAScript, such that a program which
> relied on it would not be conformant.
>
> I recommend that you find an HTML guru of the same stature as
> Crockford in the JS community, and convince her to write a lint tool
> which forbids unquoted attribute values.  Once you have that, you can
> (attempt to) popularize that style via evangelism for the lint tool,
> rather than trying to foist your stylistic preferences -- which, as it
> happens, I share -- onto the world via spec requirements.

The more I think about it, the more I'm intrigued by Rob Sayres idea
of completely removing the definition of what is "conforming". Let the
spec define UA (or HTML consumer) behavior, and let lint tools fight
out best practices for authoring.

/ Jonas

/ Jonas


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