HTML5: W3C vs WHATWG. Which gives the most authoritative spec?

html html-parsing w3c
ZJR picture ZJR · Jul 26, 2011 · Viewed 12.5k times · Source

I'm in halfway trough an html parser and found html5 defined explicitly the rules of thumb for parsing ill formed html. (And I used to infer them from DTDs, sigh)

I love that fact, but I know well that html5 isn't finalized yet (also I wonder if it ever will) and that it isn't developed by the W3C, but by the WHATWG.

Searching for the spec I need I'm presented with:

or

If it wasn't for the section numbers I would induce those are simply the same. But the different numbering makes me wonder. Which version is, supposedly, the most authoritative?

WHATWG seems to have more sections, and to have been added to since W3C uploaded its candidate recommendation.

Will W3C update to the WHATWG version?
Or will they stick to their current candidate until it gets to the official recommendation status?

Which html5 spec are we poor devils supposed to follow, when in doubt?

Answer

Chiru picture Chiru · Jan 25, 2016

Always choose WHATWG over W3C, no exceptions.

Anne van Kesteren, (a WHATWG member who was a major contributor to the the HTML specification prior to the WHATWG and W3C versions diverging, and who remains a major contributor to the WHATWG specification) describes the current situation between WHATWG and W3C as follows on his blog:

The W3C has forked the [WHATWG] HTML Standard for the nth time. As always, it is pretty disastrous:

  • Erased all Git history of the document.
  • Did not document how they transformed the document. Issues of mismatches have already been reported and it will likely be a long time, if ever, before all bugs due to this process are uncovered, since it was not open.
  • Did not discuss plans with the wider community.
  • Did not discuss plans with the folks they were forking from.
  • Did not even discuss plans with the members of the W3C Web Platform Working Group.
  • Erased the acknowledgments section.
  • Erased the copyright and licensing information and replaced it with their own.

2019: The war is finally over

On May 28th, 2019, W3C and the WHATWG have signed a agreement to collaborate on a single, authoritative version of the HTML and DOM specifications.

According to W3C's statement, the two parties have come to the following terms:

  • W3C and WHATWG work together on HTML and DOM, in the WHATWG repositories, to produce a Living Standard and Recommendation/Review Draft-snapshots
  • WHATWG maintains the HTML and DOM Living Standards
  • W3C facilitates community work directly in the WHATWG repositories (bridging communities, developing use cases, filing issues, writing tests, mediating issue resolution)
  • W3C stops independent publishing of a designated list of specifications related to HTML and DOM and instead will work to take WHATWG Review Drafts to W3C Recommendations

Related questions

Parse an HTML string with JS

I searched for a solution but nothing was relevant, so here is my problem: I want to parse a string which contains HTML text. I want to do it in JavaScript. I tried this library but it seems that it …

Read More
Regex select all text between tags

What is the best way to select all the text between 2 tags - ex: the text between all the 'pre' tags on the page.

Read More
How to extract img src, title and alt from html using php?

I would like to create a page where all images which reside on my website are listed with title and alternative representation. I already wrote me a little program to find and load all HTML files, but now I am …

Read More