[whatwg] Character-encoding-related threads

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2012-10-19 19:33, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Anyone who bookmarks a document that was not meant to be bookmarked 
> should accept the consequences.

That doesn't seem like a very user-friendly approach.


> But it seems that it is pointless to present any situations where it 
> would be legitimate to omit a <title> element, since you are prepared to 
> refuting any possible example by presenting how things could be 
> different from the scenario given.

There are definitely cases where it's ok to not have the title. For 
example, a srcdoc="" document doesn't need a title, since it's not 
independently addressable. An e-mail has a Subject line so if its body is 
HTML, it doesn't need a <title>. Both these examples are in the spec.

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