Re: lynx-dev lynx checks a radio button by default

[David Woolley]

> See the list archives for more information on this, and I'll try to find
> the reply I got on the www-html list, and for which I got permission to
> repost, although too late for the original thread.

www-html reply, reproduced with explicit permission.


> From: address@hidden [SMTP:address@hidden
> Sent: Friday, April 14, 2000 1:55 PM
> To:   'address@hidden'
> Subject:      Re: All Radio Buttons Up Condition needs clarifying - HTML
> 4.01.
> 
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Dave  J Woolley wrote:
> 
> > Someone has just sent a bug report to the lynx-dev
> > mailing list claiming that Lynx is at fault for
> > choosing a default radio button if none are marked
> > checked in the document.
> 
> There are so many bug reports against _correct_ browser behavior. :-)
> 
> > Reading the HTML 4.01 
> > specification leaves me confused as to what is really
> > intended, although all of Amaya, Netscape and IE seem
> > to start with no buttons down in that case.
> 
> Well, this is a confusing area. It is discussed by Alan Flavell at
> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/%7eflavell/www/testradio.html
> and by me at
> http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/choices.html#app
> 
> Briefly, the HTML 2.0 specification required that the user agent
> provide a default (of the first item) when no author-specified default
> exists. The HTML 3.2 specification made the additional requirement on
> authors (and documents) that a form must provide a default. 
> Then came HTML 4.0 and messed things up, perhaps because the
> popular browser behavior did not comply with the old requirement
> and it was difficult to decide what the specs should say. 
> 
> The sensible approach to this would be to re-establish the requirement on
> _documents_ to provide a default (thereby declaring documents as
> non-conforming if they fail to do that). Requirements on browsers would
> probably be futile, but this would in fact be an area where some specific
> error processing should be required.
> 
> -- 
> Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/ or http://yucca.hut.fi/yucca.html

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