RE: Latest thoughts about ISSUE-240 (DTD Validation)

I think this is a good point and don't wholly agree with Chaals.

To my mind the question is, "will misrepresenting your content which is nonetheless valid XHTML Basic diminish the user experience" And the answer seems to me to be "in general, no". So FAILing on this would probably not be the right thing to do. On the other hand, not mentioning it also seems to be odd. One would expect a WARN.

So I wonder if we should actually row back on yesterday's decision, and modify Dom's alternative proposal to say:

Current Text:

If the document does not contain a DOCTYPE declaration, FAIL

If the document is not an HTML document or it fails to validate according to its given DOCTYPE, FAIL

If the document does not declare the html namespace on its html root element, FAIL

If ( regardless of its stated DOCTYPE) the document does not validate against the XHTML Basic 1.1 DTD:

	If ( regardless of its stated DOCTYPE) it does not validate against the XHTML-MP 1.2 DTD, FAIL

Proposed Text:

If the document does not contain a DOCTYPE declaration, FAIL

If the document is not an HTML document, FAIL

If the DOCTYPE is not an XML DOCTYPE, warn

If the document is an HTML document and it has an XML DOCTYPE:
	If the document does not declare the html namespace on its html root element, FAIL
	If the DOCTYPE refers to [a known] xhtml version, validate against that DOCTYPE and if invalid, warn
	Otherwise (the DOCTYPE is not known), warn

If ( regardless of its stated DOCTYPE) the document does not validate against the XHTML Basic 1.1 DTD:

	If ( regardless of its stated DOCTYPE) it does not validate against the XHTML-MP 1.2 DTD, FAIL

--

If the above looks more-or-less OK then the question is what is the list of "known" DOCTYPEs and how can the spec be made future proof against further versions of xhtml? (That's the good thing about standards, there are so many of them to choose from)

Jo


> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
> Sent: 18 April 2008 02:17
> To: Miguel Garcia; public-bpwg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Latest thoughts about ISSUE-240 (DTD Validation)
> 
> 
> On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:17:22 +0200, Miguel Garcia
> <miguel.garcia@fundacionctic.org> wrote:
> 
> ...[explanation of why...]
> > For an outside viewer mobileOK Basic grammar validity requirement could
> > look a bit weird.
> 
> Sure. The only sensible explanation is that it takes into account what
> works in the real world, rather than trying to require things that don't
> matter in practice, and also takes into account the purpose of the
> grammar, rather than saying "well, anything is as good as anything else".
> 
> The easy way to get this right is to do the right thing. But some wrong
> things have no real impact so don't matter. This test is smart enough to
> recognise some of that.
> 
> cheers
> 
> Chaals
> 
> --
> Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>      je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
> http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com

Received on Friday, 18 April 2008 08:41:33 UTC