[whatwg] HTML as a text format: Should <title> be optional?

[Brian Campbell]

On Oct 5, 2009, at 10:40 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

>> For example, see Google Gadgets
>> <http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/>, or iframe sandboxes used
>> for isolating untrusted content while still being inline in the page.
>
> Yes, if we add doc="" support to <iframe> maybe that would make this  
> case
> common enough that we should reconsider.

I had to look up what doc="" meant, so for the edification of others,  
the proposal is here:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/2008May/0326.html

>> So, my recommendation is that <title> be made optional; perhaps a
>> validator could issue a warning if you leave it off, but there are
>> perfectly valid cases of wanting to produce an HTML document that
>> doesn't have any sort of meaningful title or for which a title will
>> never be seen or used, it doesn't seem likely that people will  
>> forget it
>> in cases in which it's useful,
>
> I think this is something we should revisit in a future version. I'm  
> not
> convinced we're at a stage yet where there are enough non-standalone  
> HTML
> pages that it makes sense to not require <title> for any pages.  
> Changing
> something this fundamental can have social repurcussions in the  
> community
> that aren't obvious (e.g. old timers saying we're ruining HTML4),  
> and I
> feel that we've done enough of that already with HTML5 without  
> changing
> this also, frankly.

Fair enough. I can definitely see the value in that argument.

-- Brian