[whatwg] maincontent element spec updated and supporting data provided

[Jonas Sicking]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> I just wanted to make sure everyone is clear that this <maincontent> part
> is not part of the HTML specification, and is not a WHATWG specification.
> We have previously had miscommunications about this kind of thing, e.g.
> with responsive images, where there was some expectation from some people
> that if a proposal got written up, it would be adopted. This is not the
> case; what decides whether a proposal is adopted or not is whether it has
> real use cases and compelling reasoning.

I thought the requirement was that it got adoption by implementations?

> In the case of <maincontent>, there is no problem to be solved, and there
> is no use case that isn't already adequately handled by HTML.

I believe there are different opinions about this. I don't have a
strong opinion myself, but I don't believe the case is as clear-cut as
the above sentence makes it sound.

> Naturally, anyone is welcome to make proposals and discuss use cases, but
> I would encourage people participating on this mailing list to focus first
> on establishing use cases, to avoid returning to topics that have
> previously been discussed without adding new information, and to avoid
> discussing minutiae of proposals before firmly establishing that there are
> solid use cases.

Agreed.

/ Jonas