RobG wrote:
I wish someone who actually designed the "phantom nodes" behaviour would
enter the discussion at mozilla.org and explain why that decision was
made, then the discussion might be far more focused.
AFAIK Boris Zbarsky is the "reader" of W3C specs in order to transform
them into practical algorithms for Gecko engine. A very knowledgeable
and patient person as I can tell from his posts. Actually any other one
couldn't make the job right as his task is similar to draw practical
blue prints out of Bible's liturgies :-))
Still in this particular case he seems failed to read the "original
intentions" right and his "never FONTFIX no matter what" seems more an
emotion rather than a conclusion on spelled arguments. Everyone
interested is invited once again to read all arguments and
contre-arguments at:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26179>
It also seems that it is wrongly precluded that VK is the initiator and
some kind of pusher of this issue. I'd like to assure everyone that I
neither filed the bug, nor numerous doublicates of this bug, nor I
initiated all blogs and discussions across the Internet. Yet I may
guess on what side (Boris Zbarsky and Fx Co or Web developers) am I :-)
I see the Phantomists Party arguments failed (but this is what /I/ see
with my narrow mind).
The major (and seems the only one) pro-argument for phantom nodes being
the ability to dynamically switch a fragment from parsed version to
<pre> format and back and the ability to have <pre> version exactly as
it was on the server.
This kind of argument remind me an old story with OSHA (grrrrr... waw,
waw - good it's over). They issued a penalty to one well known in CA
grocery store for fire extinguisher fixed on wall on the chest level.
It was required to fix them on the level of... your pants pockets. The
reason: 1) if there is a fire in the store and 2) there is a customer
at this moment on wheelchair and 3) this customer decides to
participate in the fight with fire: then she can easily reach the
extinguisher on the wall.
IMHO the phantom node preservation based on the same weird way of
putting things together: first you construct a more than questionable
situation and than you adjust the environment for disconvenience of the
real use but in convenience of the mental construct you just did.
And the major (and seems the only one) contre-argument in order to keep
things as they are is "DOM methods are still usable after some
adjustments even with phantom nodes". Yeh, they are... specially
written tree walker will make the trick. Yet the argument "you /still/
can use it" is not a kind of argument for a UA fighting for users and
developers sympathies. Everything can be used after adjustment,
hacking, twisting around etc. Yet "you /still/ can use it" is an
arguments for potential losers, not for potential winners.