Subject: Re: [Xml-sg-cmt] ekr hates <t indent=0>

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jan 2021 15:41:40 -0500

> I understand (I think) the basis for his objection (making diff efforts take 
> an extra step).

That was my original understanding but this is for the published RFC. He's made 
it quite clear his objection is that it's ugly.

> But I don't think he has ground to hold the document from publication based 
> on this - it should just be published and we should move forward at best 
> speed. The should talk him past blocking the document because of this.
> 
> Having EKR make this one change in the code right now isn't the right thing 
> to do - we need to address the bigger question of whether we reverse the 
> overall decision to populate defaults everywhere. <t> isn't special. (but 
> "indent" might be).

We can made a sensible distnction between attributes that have always been 
explcit and attributes that haven't.  For the latter group there's no point to 
start adding explicit defaults.

We can also have a discussion about whether it ever made sense to add all the 
defaults since they make the XML a lot larger and I'm not aware of any place 
where it seems useful to change the default.

R's,
John

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 16:41:46 +0100

> where it seems useful to change the default.

This seems like a reasonable argument all the way up to the point in time
when we find that changing a default is really the right thing to do.  Then
not having the defaults in the prepped published files is suddenly a complete
showstopper.

So I can see why the design team chose to make all defaults expanded and
explicit.

It preserves future freedom to do the right thing whatever that might be,
without being locked in by past history.

Regards,

	Henrik