[whatwg] Web Storage: apparent contradiction in spec

[Eduard Pascual]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> Flash's privacy problem can be removed by uninstalling Flash. They're not
> a license to add more privacy problems to the platform.

And a permanent's storage potential privacy problems could also be
removed by having separate "Delete cookies from this site" and "Delete
cookies and all other data from this site" buttons side by side.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:36 AM, Peter Kasting<pkasting at google.com> wrote:
> All the spec really says is that UAs should note to their users that sites
> can keep data about them in Local Storage.  This isn't grounds for a
> tantrum.

The problem is not what the spec says, or is supposed to say, but how
does it say it. This long discussion seems to be mostly around the
point that the current wording is too likely to be miss-interpreted as
"The "delete cookies" button (or any equivalent UI element) should
also delete all other data stored by the site".

Now, this question is mostly addressed to Ian, as the only one who can
provide a 100% accurate answer: based on the spec text intent, would
the idea of having separate "Delete cookies" and "Delete everything"
buttons side by side be conformant?
If it would (and a lot of people here seem to be arguing that it
would), then this discussion could be easily be put to an end by
tweaking the wording in a way that makes this more clearer.

Extra: more mails are flowing as I'm writing this, more messages are
flowing into my inbox. Trying to reply to all of them would get me on
an endless loop, but the discussion seems to be more about what the
spec text is supposed to mean rather than what it would say. So,
please, Ian, whatever it is supposed to say, could you word it in a
way that is clear enough for everybody?
Discussion about what the spec should say is generally productive but,
IMO, discussion about what it's supposed to mean is
counter-productive: the efforts put by all participants into this
debate would be more useful on other aspects of the language.

Regards,
Eduard Pascual