Hi Xianzhu,
On Jun 1, 2010, at 9:37 PM, Xianzhu Wang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to webkit development, and I'd like to hear opinions about the
> problems I met.
>
> Now I'm trying to fix some "old" layout bugs, for example:
> * white space preceding <br> (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37261)
> * relative font-size (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18413)
> * line breaking around some punctuations
> (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37698)
>
> Some people have warned me about the difficulty of fixing these bugs, and now
> I have realized it. Fixing the bugs themselves is not very difficult, for
> example, only 2 functional lines change can fix the first bug. However, the
> change will break more than 4000 existing layout tests mostly because
> trailing spaces preceding <br>s in current expectations of the tests (for
> example, "PASS " vs "PASS"). I tried to rebaseline all effected layout tests
> (for now on mac only), and the patch is about 6MB (Sorry I overlooked the
> "Bigfile" option when I submitted the patch, so I split it into 4 parts).
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. The bugs violate the standards and cause some site compatibility issues.
> However, because the bugs are old, some web developers might treat them as
> features and depend on them, so fixing them might break some existing pages.
> Is there any existing policy about this problem?
Not sure. I think WebKit should not make a policy decision to diverge from the
standard (quirks mode withstanding) unless WebKit developers are actively
advocating a change to the relevant standard.
> Are these bugs worth fixing?
* white space preceding <br> (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37261)
Unless I’m missing something, there is no known downside to fixing this bug.
Seems worthwhile.
* relative font-size (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18413)
Is this really a standards compliance issue or just compatibility with Firefox?
If there is a standards issue, is there a subset of the change that’s
sufficient for standards compliance? Unless WebKit is in violation of a
standard here, I personally don’t consider this important, but I know that
other contributors have agreed to this change in principle, and it’s just that
the patch has been abandoned by the original author.
* line breaking around some punctuations
(https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37698)
Seems worthwhile if it aligns WebKit with Firefox and IE. If moves away from IE
compatibility, I wouldn’t do it. The main issue here is efficiency.
Personally, I think it’s good that you’re looking into such long-standing
standards/compatibility issues!
Regards,
—Dan
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