Re: Support Existing Content

On Wed, May 2, 2007 2:03 am, Gareth Hay wrote:
> On 2 May 2007, at 09:50, James Graham wrote:
>> This ignores the fact that many sites are dynamically generated
>> from a combination of author supplied content and external content
>> such as user supplied content and adverts. This means that there is
>> no opportunity to see the "final" page to check for syntax errors.
>> Instead one has to hope that one's publishing system is
>> sufficiently bug free to reject ill-formed content automatically.
>
> it doesn't ignore it - these sytems will *not* overnight suddenly
> declare themselves to be sending html5 compliant code.
> I don't agree that using content from differing sources is like black
> magic, and the problems that you mention originate from the poor
> error handling of previous versions of html anyway.

"I don't agree" isn't a rebuttal.  He is entirely correct.  Rendering a
page as XML (which has no error handling, like what you are advocating) is
just not worth the trouble in any situation where you do not completely
control the content.  Advertisers in particular don't care about
validating code in the least.  And your last comment about "poor error
handling of previous versions of HTML" doesn't even make sense to me in
the context of this discussion.

Having no browser error handling for HTML 5 just pushes the responsibility
onto the developer and makes the Web less usable and more frustrating for
everyone involved.  Maybe you'd like to see <try> and <catch> in HTML
documents, but I wouldn't.

On Wed, May 2, 2007 3:28 am, Gareth Hay wrote:
> I suppose your definition of a good reason differs from mine. I want
> to fix the web, and make it a better place for authors and for
> renderers, that is my reason.
> I guess HTML, or certainly the next evolution of it is going to
> persist with the problems that dog it today.
>
> Fine. I think today will be my last day on the list.

Taking your ball and going home is silly.  Claiming that you are for
"fixing the Web", as if no one else here is trying to improve it as well,
is even more silly.  People have different opinions on how to improve the
lives of implementors and content authors.  For example, I think your
proposal would make the lives of content authors a nightmare.

In any situation where it comes down to making the lives of content
authors much easier at implementors' expense, or making the lives of
implementors much easier at content authors' expense, I'm afraid I'll side
with content authors every time.

-Matt

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:52:12 UTC