quote:DL-44 said:
Just for the record....this is a *completely" irrelevant question.
No, it's not. It's hypothetical. So please answer it instead.
quote:reisio said:
quote:Browsers sniff the doctype declaration. Does that mean that a doctype is invalid as it's not used the way the spec describes?
No of course not, but if you used a doctype declaration in a way that is at odds with how the spec says it is to be used, it would.
That was my whole point. Doctype sniffing is not in the spec. It doesn't talk about "standards mode" or "quirks mode". Browsers started using the doctype for something that it wasn't meant for according to the spec*.
Now, if someone inserts a doctype declaration in a document for the sole purpose of triggering standards mode (which, in your own words, "is at odds with how the spec says it is to be used"), does that mean that the document is invalid? No, of course not. Browser behavior does not decide what's valid/non-conformant or not.
And I completely agree with liorean, who sums it up great, especially in the last post.
______
*) And by the way, from an SGML point of view, the description of doctypes in HTML 4 is completely non-sensical.
quote:No, it's not. It's hypothetical. So please answer it instead.
Yes, it is. So there's no point answering it. Chasing that kind of hypothetical would seem to be why you guys are having such a hard time grasping this...
It's hypothetical because it's a situation which we never entered into. However, it is relevant because there are logical conclusions to draw from what the answer is that are neither hypothetical nor irrelevant. So there is a point to answering it.
To rephrase, it's basically asking you whether you think that something that has nothing to do with either the document or the spec can have an effect on the relationship between the document and the spec.
Your argument makes no sense. According to you, the contents of comments shouldn't be ignored no matter what it is... thereby making it not a comment at all. Or perhaps the contents of a comment should be determined to have special meaning or not based on whether the author felt it should be special or not? You can't have it both ways.
quote:HZR said:
quote:DL-44 said:
Just for the record....this is a *completely" irrelevant question.
No, it's not. It's hypothetical. So please answer it instead.
Didn't you ask me? I answered.
quote:HZR said:
Browser behavior does not decide what's valid/non-conformant or not.
Browsers do not insert IE conditional comments, authors do.
quote:Your argument makes no sense. According to you, the contents of comments shouldn't be ignored no matter what it is... thereby making it not a comment at all.
I cannot possibly see how you interpreted it that way. What he said was rather the opposite. Quoting liorean:
quote:[The HTML spec] dictates that information that occurs between comments has no meaning - meaning that any content the coder puts inside the comment is void of meaning.
Of course the contents of a comment should be ignored by parsers. I don't think there's an argument over that. The fact that one browser happens to not do that, is however nothing that makes the syntax invalid.
quote:Didn't you ask me?
I did, but I thought that DL-44 could explain his position when it was pointed out to him explicitly that the question was hypothetical.
quote:Browsers do not insert IE conditional comments, authors do.
Likewise, authors do not decide what's valid/non-conformant or not. The spec does that.
quote:I did, but I thought that DL-44 could explain his position when it was pointed out to him explicitly that the question was hypothetical.
It was obviously a hypothetical question.
I am very confused on how something being hypothetical stops it from being irrelevant?
For instance, let me ask you: hypothetically, if pigs were purple, would that make you like tomatoes less?
Completely Hypothetical. Still completely irrelevant
But any way, if you really need an answer -
The CC syntax did not exist prior to the user agent being able to make use of it.
Whatever logical conclusions you want to pull out of the hypothetical do not apply to the reality.
Resio: That is exactly the opposite of my point, and I don't see how you can possibly read that out of my argument. I've several times now made the point that comment content is ignored in HTML, thus the author's intent and purpose for placing it there is totally irrelevant for whether the document is conformant or not. ANY possible content that can be placed inside a comment according to the comment syntax carries no specific meaning in HTML. That includes the IE conditional comment syntax.
Likewise, the fact that there is a user agent that is non-conformant and treats a document different from how the spec tells user agents to treat it does not change whether the document itself is conformant or not.
DL-44: No, it's not totally irrelevant, since as I said the answer to that question has logical conclusions that are entirely non-hypothetical. It's a question of establishing which factors are important - according to you - as to whether a document is conformant to the spec or not.
If I constructed a Mozilla extension that suddenly gave certain comments that already exist on the web a defined meaning in Firefox, and spread this extension around, then we would have another user agent with such special comment syntax as the ie conditional comments. Would documents that contained this comment syntax before that point in time suddenly become non-conformant because of this? Would future documents that contain this comment syntax be non-conformant where they previously would not have been?
Oh, but that is incorrect. The logical conclusions DO apply to reality. Not to the reality of where we stand today, but the reality of what policies we use today. You see, the answer would tell us that you're applying a different rationale than us to the concept of spec conformity. Which means that we can remove assumptions or change assumptions to be in line with your answer, and see where that leads us. And if the result leads us to absurd situations (as it will on this specific issue) then we can do a reductio ad absurdum argument against your basic premise.
If you talk in circles lone enough, you can think it all makes sense I suppose
I think it comes down to this: if you have to spend that much time correlating hypotheticals, and you need to spend this much verbiage on your justifications...it should really tell you something about your basic argument.
Oh, but I'm just trying to disprove one specific point: That conditional comments do not make an HTML document non-conformant. I've laid down at least one very straight forward argument that you apparently ignore, without explaining exactly why. Others have done the same.
So we try to explain why your standpoint is incorrect through leading it to it's logical conclusions, but you dismiss a question that would either prove an answer that is inconsistent with your earlier standpoint (if the answer is no) or that would lead into a downwards spiral resulting in eventually no content being a possible conformant comment (if the answer is yes).
But, since you refuse to answer HZR's question, please answer one of my two later questions, neither of which talks specifically about the ie conditional comments syntax, but both of which will lead to the same results either way.
quote:if you have to spend that much time correlating hypotheticals [...]
We haven't. The question has been asked a number of times since you refuse to answer it, calling it irrelevant even when it has been explained to you why it's not. Now, please answer lioreans's question about the Firefox extension (which is exactly the point I tried to make).
quote:it should really tell you something about your basic argument.
Well, we have actually put forward arguments. You haven't. You have, in fact, not even bothered to explain why you think we're wrong when we say that something external to the specification cannot have any influence whatsoever on the spec in question.
You both seem to think I've said a great many things I haven't. I haven't said anything about most of your points, and I won't.
I simply pointed out a logical flaw, and have explained myself quite fully.
I am also confused as to why you both insist that I have refused to answer your question when I did in fact answer it (just not with the yes/no answer you wanted).
~shrug~
You have both explained what meaning you *think* will come from the answer, to which I have simply and directly responded. Explaining the same thing 12 more times with rude tones isn't going to change the answer any
quote:I am also confused as to why you both insist that I have refused to answer your question when I did in fact answer it (just not with the yes/no answer you wanted).
Your so called answer was this:
quote:The CC syntax did not exist prior to the user agent being able to make use of it.
which suggests that someone couldn't have written
code:
<!--[if IE]> ... <![endif]-->
before IE started assigning meaning to it. Which is of course wrong.
You're right - we've been considering you as taking Resio's position when in fact you haven't stated much either way. However, let's see what you wrote that sparked this derailment:
quote:Just for the record....this is a *completely" irrelevant question.
Nobody used the CC syntax before it was "meaningful" to IE. And nobody would.
it is used absolutely soley for the purpose of it's non-conformant properties. It is absurd to speak of it outside of that context.
You're making plenty of assumptions here that go counter to our earlier argument:
- First of all, you're talking about "it's non-conformat properties", which means that you think it's got some properties that are not conformant. You haven't taken any time to explain which these properties are of what makes them non-conformant, while our argument earlier was specifically that they are not non-conformant.
- Second, you are talking about this syntax specifically, while we're talking rather about conformity. If you take the comment syntax of HTML and list all possible contents, you would find you could split that up into two lists (both infinite in size), one of conformant comments and one of non-conformant ones. Our argument is that the lists are the same before and after ie implemented that syntax. If the lists are not the same, that means that a factor outside of the spec itself can affect whether the same content is compliant or not. That means that our question is not irrelevant on the policy level - it determines whether it's possible to make content that was previously conformant somehow be non-conformant.
- Third, it is not an answer to the question, it is an explanation of your standpoint that it's not a relevant question.
Every language has three basic building blocks, grammar, vocabulary and semantics. They together build a context. The semantics in that context can either make sense or be nonsensical. Sometimes it's hard to tell, sometimes it's crystal clear either way.
Let's take something from my quotes file: "Hold the newsmedia's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers." Every part of it can be found in the English vocabulary. The sentence conforms to the somewhat muddy grammar of modern English. Every word has some associated semantics. Taken in context though, it's absolute nonsense.
posted 10-25-2008 15:06
You can't have it both ways.
