The question is what "necessary" means in terms of willful violations of
specs. There are at least three cases I can understand, with different
implications:
There are cases where the existing spec, while it claims to apply,
actually is a bad idea. Then we need to document the problem and the
solution, and make sure the community agrees to the change. This
happens. It usually results in an "updates" indication in the new spec,
so folks know that the old one is not complete.
There are cases where a spec is documenting existing practice. IIt can
document that practice is different from the spec. It has to do so
while carefully being clear that the standards should apply, and that
the practice does not match. It is often useful to discuss the reasons
for the mismatch.
Then there are cases where folks are attempting to standardizea space
that has been unclear, under-specified, or a mess, and much of the space
does not comply with the specs. That is NOT a good reason to
standardize non-compliant behavior.
I can not tell which of those you mean when you say that "Willful
violations of other specs where necessary are acceptable."
Yours,
Joel
On 6/16/2011 5:20 AM, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
On 2011-06-16 11:14, Julian Reschke wrote:
On the other hand, you're trying to define a URI scheme. If it's
handling conflicts with the base URI spec, that's a bug. Period. You may
*document* that some UAs have this bug, but you can't change it to be
not a bug.
Theoretical purity is not a priority for the specs I edit. Wilful
violations of other specs where necessary are acceptable.
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