2012-10-19 2:09, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
[...]
>> It might be better to declare <title> optional but strongly recommend
>> its use on web or intranet pages (it might be rather irrelevant in other
>> uses of HTML).
>
> That's basically what the spec says -- if there's a higher-level protocol
> that gives a <title>, then it's not required. It's only required if
> there's no way to get a title.
My point is that the title may be irrelevant, rather than specified
using a higher-level protocol.
> Are there any situations that this doesn't handle where it would be
> legitimate to omit a <title> element?
Perhaps the simplest case is an HTML document that is only meant to be
displayed inside an inline frame and containing, say, just a numeric
table. It is not meant to be found and indexed by search engines, it is
not supposed to be rendered as a standalone document with a browser top
bar (or equivalent) showing its title, etc.
The current wording looks OK to me, and it to me, it says that a title
is not needed when the document is not to be used out of context:
"The title element represents the document's title or name. Authors
should use titles that identify their documents even when they are used
out of context, for example in a user's history or bookmarks, or in
search results."
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-title-element
Authors may still wish to use a <title> element in a document that is to
be just shown in an inline frame, but it is comment-like then. I don't
think it's something that should be required (even in a "should" clause).
Yucca
