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Text formats are for people #505

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Text formats are for people #505

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Text formats are for people
martinthomson Jul 16, 2024
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Some great suggestions
martinthomson Aug 2, 2024
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VWS
martinthomson Aug 2, 2024
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Update index.bs
LeaVerou Aug 2, 2024
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LeaVerou Aug 2, 2024
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LeaVerou Aug 2, 2024
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text iz for humanz
martinthomson Aug 5, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -587,6 +587,58 @@ See also:
* [[#secure-context]]
* [[#consent]]

<h3 id=text-formats>Design textual formats for people</h3>
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Design textual formats that can be easily produced and consumed by people.

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Suggested change
Textual formats also improve [transparency](https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#transparent).

Favor readability over compactness.
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File size can be optimized by tooling,
and tends to become a lower priority over time.
When file size is a significantly higher priority,
perhaps a textual format is not appropriate.

<div class=example>
SVG path syntax was designed to be compact,
with single-letter commands and unlabeled series of coordinates after them.
At the time, file size was a primary concern,
but while the importance of this has changed over time,
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the cost to human readability has remained the same.
</div>

People who are presented with a textual format
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should be able to use a text editor
to easily produce or modify content.
People who edit text will introduce a range of errors, but
could struggle to identify and fix those errors.

People expect some amount of flexibility in terms of how their edits are processed.
Allowing flexibility in whitespace, quoting, delimiters, and other syntactic elements ensures
that content is still comprehensible.
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This is not about comprehensibility, but ease of editing / error prevention.

Might be good to link to the robustness principle somewhere.

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I literally wrote an RFC that says that the robustness principle harms interoperability: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9413.html

I have friends who like to troll me with the phrase "Postel was wrong", but I'm guessing that didn't know :)

Either way, I think that this would be a mistake for the reasons stated in that document (see this bit). I think that your point about this being an example is a good one though. I've suggested something below.

Comment on lines +614 to +616
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People expect some amount of flexibility in terms of how their edits are processed.
Allowing flexibility in whitespace, quoting, delimiters, and other syntactic elements ensures
that content is still comprehensible.
Syntactic [robustness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle)
typically improves the usability of textual formats.
If user intent is unambiguous, flexibility in whitespace, quoting, delimiters, and other syntactic elements
makes the syntax less error-prone and creates a more pleasant editing experience.

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Suggested change
People expect some amount of flexibility in terms of how their edits are processed.
Allowing flexibility in whitespace, quoting, delimiters, and other syntactic elements ensures
that content is still comprehensible.
People expect some amount of flexibility in terms of how their edits are processed.
Clearly defining syntactic flexibility--
such as in white space, quoting, or delimiters--
could ensure that content is both easy to edit and produces consistent results.


<div class=example>
The JSON format is an example of a format that appears to be flexible,
but it lacks many of these basic usability amenities.
In JSON there is:
no commenting capability,
objects and arrays cannot have trailing commas, and
quotes are mandatory for object keys.
This makes JSON prone to syntactic errors as a result of manual edits.
</div>

Containing the scope of a format that is affected by a syntax error
could improve robustness and human usability.
This requires that specifications fully define processing and
error handling rules so that errors are handled in the same way.
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<div class=example>
Typos in CSS properties only cause that property to be ignored.
Errors in properties rarely cause an entire rule to be lost.
</div>

If your format is intended to be used only by machines,
a binary format is likely to be more efficient,
in addition to discouraging people from authoring or editing content.

<h3 id="secure-context">Consider limiting new features to secure contexts</h3>

Always limit your feature to secure contexts
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