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RE: Boolean attributes in XHTML/HTML5

• From: "Len Bullard" <Len.Bullard@ses-i.com>
• To: "David Carlisle" <davidc@nag.co.uk>,"Jesper Tverskov" <jesper.tverskov@g...>
• Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:02:40 -0600

Which doesn't answer the question why they didn't choose disabled="yes".

SGML did everything possible to reduce keystrokes.  Another "friendly to
author; not convenient for programmer" decision made in the day when it
was considered smarter to make it easy for the person using the SGML, an
author, in a time when desktops were almost unknown and the majority of
stations were dedicated word processing systems and rare.  When I worked
at GE, we had the Apollo/Context systems using SGML of a sort (Charlie
Sorgi's design and Charlie was the first I heard use the term, "SGML
nazis") while simultaneously maintaining a typing pool.  Understand, the
major customer and consumer of SGML was not the Oxford project: it was
the US military.  The competition was Interleaf and some other smaller
WYSIWYG systems that furiously attempted to mate markup to their
hardwired style systems for printing, hypertext being at that time
considered a "left wing lunatic fringe" idea.  Really.

XML was designed to attract very young programmers as the markup
community found themselves on the other side of the desk.  Some people
have forgotten the long line of decisions made for the DePH.   Now it is
obvious that consistency is more important than keystrokes for any
constituency.

HTML5 continues the botch that is HTML, a gencoding solution for a
browser that has become a fat over ornamented attempt to wrest the
desktop from the desk and push all information into the cloud.  That is
a mistake but it will take a bit more time for industry to understand
the full implications of leasing their brains from outside the company
and giving over ownerships of their most important assets to others
who's first interest is not their own.

If Apple hasn't proved the point, it's probably time for the programmers
to go in search of brains to rent.  Like it or not, the customer
perceptions shape the design.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: David Carlisle [mailto:davidc@nag.co.uk] 
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 4:42 AM
To: Jesper Tverskov
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re:  Boolean attributes in XHTML/HTML5

On 10/02/2012 10:26, Jesper Tverskov wrote:
 > Is there an explanation why we ended up with the awkward 
disabled="disabled"?

yes it's the SGML heritage. in the short form

<foo disabled>

it is not the attribute _name_ that is given it is the _value_, if there

is one attribute with that value allowed in the schema, you don't need 
to give the attribute name. most html parsers though didn't implement 
sgml rules and took it as an attribute name (with a value being omitted 
or ignored)  so disabled="disabled" makes both views work, html5 cut the

ties with sgml so can relax the rules.

David

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• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Boolean attributes in XHTML/HTML5
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>

• References:
  • Boolean attributes in XHTML/HTML5
    • From: Jesper Tverskov <jesper.tverskov@gmail.com>
  • Re: Boolean attributes in XHTML/HTML5
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>