[whatwg] Character-encoding-related threads

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > 
> > 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 initial intent of such a document may be to only display it in a 
frame, but since it's independently addressable, nothing stops a search 
engine from referencing it, a user from bookmarking it, etc. So I don't 
think that's an example of where omitting <title> is a good idea.


> 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

That isn't what that says. Please make sure never to read between the 
lines when reading a specification.

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