Re: Comments on HTML WG face to face meetings in France Oct 08

Henri Sivonen wrote:

> I believe this is a latter-day interpretation that has sprung up now 
> that Draconian failure has become unpopular but it is neither supported 
> by the record of drafting the XML spec nor supported by the 
> understanding of XML processor developers as evidenced by their actions.

I think you misunderstand what's being proposed. No one is suggesting 
that an XML parser should do something different, and the record is 
clear on that. However going back to the first edition spec, and the 
e-mail you cite, it's clear that parsers are allowed to pass *unparsed 
text* to the application after encountering a fatal error, and that the 
application is free to do whatever it wants to with that text, including 
passing it to a non-XML parser.

In practice, that just hasn't been a very useful or necessary feature. 
Most applications find it easier to just work require well-formed XML 
and call it a day.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Refactoring HTML Just Published!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0321503635/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA

Received on Wednesday, 31 December 2008 13:09:45 UTC