[whatwg] The political and legal status of WHATWG

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007, Jim Jewett wrote:
> 
> I think it would be worthwhile to formally make an explicit statement 
> that the standard is intended to be primarily *descriptive* rather than 
> *prescriptive*.  I would suggest the Introduction of the document 
> itself, or possibly even the abstract.

I don't really know what the practical difference would be. The spec is 
both -- it's prescriptive (it says what browsers must do to be compatible 
with each other) and descriptive (what it says they must do is usually 
what they do do anyway). In any case I think this might be a bit of a 
overly philosophical point to have in the introduction.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'