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> Protocol designs and implementations should be maximally strict. Wasn't this the goal of xhtml?
by throw7 4y ago
> Protocol designs and implementations should be maximally strict.
Wasn't this the goal of xhtml?
- mannykannot 4y agoIt is much harder to become more strict after adoption, even if it would bring considerable benefits.
- modeless 4y agoHTML5 is strict too. But it is strict in a pragmatic way, which makes it much nicer to write and read. Instead of forcing authors to write verbose code to an exacting spec without errors, they allowed authors to take shortcuts and make errors. But crucially, then they rigorously specified how those shortcuts and errors must be handled in all cases. It doesn't matter if all your angle brackets are in the right place or all your attributes are quoted. What matters is that all implementations do the same thing given the same input. You can be strict and achieve interoperability without punitive error handling.
- Karellen 4y ago> But crucially, then they rigorously specified how those shortcuts and errors must be handled in all cases. If the behaviour of such code is rigorously specified, is it even correct to label them "shortcuts" or "errors"?