Thomas Broyer schreef:
<...> Even though there
are only 5 characters... if it has no meaning to someone they can easily
make mistakes: "{3,}." or ",{3.}". Easy as it is, this stuff is
abrcadabra to a lot of authors.
Given that:
If the pattern given by the attribute specifies a pattern that is
incompatible with the grammar of the control type, as in the example
below, then the control could never be satisfied.
those authors will immediately see their mistake.
This is the same reasoning as behind:
The requirement that the pattern match the entire string is present
because it is expected that the overwhelming majority of use cases
will be to require that user input exactly match the given pattern.
Authors who forget that these characters are implied will immediately
realise their mistake during testing. Had the characters not been
implied, requiring most authors to insert them themselves, it is
likely that authors who forgot them would not catch their mistake as
easily.
True, authors will probably notice there is something wrong (a maxlength
that was supposed to be a minlength or another mistake), but that
doesn't mean they know how to correct this mistake.
The 'fun' thing is that here the specs take the strict/rigid route in
order to make things more clear for the authors, but on other occasions
a loose aproach is chosen for exactly the same reason as 'strict' would
make things harder.
HTML5 tries to add attributes (and elements) only when really needed.
Well, you might wonder whether <input type="range"> adds something to
type="number" that is really needed.
Authors have survived the lack of minlength in HTML4, why couldn't
they survive its lack in HTML5 too? They're not forced to use pattern=
after all (particularly if they don't understand it).
They even survived the lack of HTML5. Still, we're discussing its
features ;-)
Authors that want to define a minimal length are (=will be) in fact
forced to use the pattern attribute according to the current specs.
You're not forced to use new features of HTML5 ;-)
You don't know my boss. As soon as he finds out about things like the
<canvas> element, or the new Web Forms features... oh boy.
And I'm not at all against a minlength= attribute either.
You have a strange way of showing that ;-)
I just try
to find arguments to resist adding yet another attribute to HTML ;-)
Seriously, I try to give arguments that might have already been given
(I don't know, maybe minlength= was already requested some day) and
would have lead to what's in the spec today (i.e. no minlength=
attribute)
But why, if you're _not at all_ against it?
I'm not sure either whether this was requested earlier already. And I
think I know what the arguments against it are and I believe to
understand the logics underneath them. But it's for the sake of the
authors that I request this feature as I believe that regular
expressions are just too complicated for most of them.
cheers,
Sander
