[whatwg] Character-encoding-related threads

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-10-19 2:09, Ian Hickson wrote:

 > On Fri, 13 Jul 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
[...]
 >> It might be better to declare <title> optional but strongly recommend
 >> its use on web or intranet pages (it might be rather irrelevant in other
 >> uses of HTML).
 >
 > That's basically what the spec says -- if there's a higher-level protocol
 > that gives a <title>, then it's not required. It's only required if
 > there's no way to get a title.

My point is that the title may be irrelevant, rather than specified 
using a higher-level protocol.

 > Are there any situations that this doesn't handle where it would be
 > legitimate to omit a <title> element?

Perhaps the simplest case is an HTML document that is only meant to be 
displayed inside an inline frame and containing, say, just a numeric 
table. It is not meant to be found and indexed by search engines, it is 
not supposed to be rendered as a standalone document with a browser top 
bar (or equivalent) showing its title, etc.

The current wording looks OK to me, and it to me, it says that a title 
is not needed when the document is not to be used out of context:

"The title element represents the document's title or name. Authors 
should use titles that identify their documents even when they are used 
out of context, for example in a user's history or bookmarks, or in 
search results."
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-title-element

Authors may still wish to use a <title> element in a document that is to 
be just shown in an inline frame, but it is comment-like then. I don't 
think it's something that should be required (even in a "should" clause).

Yucca