W3C Wicked Cool Stuff Specification

Abstract

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Table of Contents

• 1. RFC 2119 is not optional
• 2. Small Talk about Abbreviations
• 3. A Defining Moment
• 4. The Dahut interface
• • 4.1 Attributes
  • 4.2 Methods
• 5. A Good Reference
• A. Acknowledgements
• B. References
• • B.1 Normative references
  • B.2 Informative references

1. RFC 2119 is not optional

There are several RFC 2119 keywords: must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional. They are only recognised in uppercase, so that one may still write normally if one must. Importantly, the must not fail when happening over line breaks, but:

• must
• NOT
• work over element boundaries.

2. Small Talk about Abbreviations

W3C is no different from other geek outfits, and is therefore full of abbreviations. We don't care about the silly debate going on about abbr and acronym, we just support whatever people use, so that the following all ought to work:

• DAHUT and DAHUT
• abbr and abbr
• srsly and srsly

3. A Defining Moment

A definition is an element that marks out a term that is defined in the current block.

They can sometimes be definitions with a title so that they can be written in the flow of the sentence without disruption.

Sometimes you will see an AbbrDef, which is an abbreviation-based definition.

One thing that should definitely work is creating definitions over multiple lines in the source.

It is then possible to reuse them. The title trick works both ways so that definitions can be reused fluidly. It would be possible to automatically detect them but for the time being they require an a element.

This should have no problem mixing up with abbr as AbbrDef shows, and a definition with a title works over several lines, just like definitions over multiple lines.

4. The Dahut interface

This is a simple example of the way in which Web IDL [WEBIDL] interfaces are created. This one is for the Dahut interface.

[Constructor]
interface Dahut : Mammal, Cryptoid {
    readonly attribute DOMString     chirality;
             attribute unsigned long age;
    Dahut         turnAround (in float angle, in boolean fall);
    unsigned long trip ();
    void          yell ([AllowAny] in unsigned long volume, [TreatNullAs=EmptyString] in DOMString sentence);
};

5. A Good Reference

One can trivially make references to any specification, say for instance [WIDGETS], [WICD], and even in a normative way [REX] or [SVGMOBILE12]. It's all about I18N, [ZHMARK].

A. Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Marcos Cáceres for moral support, and to Bert Bos and Geoffrey Sneddon for their tools from which I pilfered joyfully.

B. References