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

On Jan 2, 2009, at 5:51 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

>
> On Dec 31, 2008, at 15:09, Elliotte Harold wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> If you consider black box-distinguishable conformance, what's the  
> difference between the XML parser signaling an error and handing the  
> rest of the stream to the application which hands it to another non- 
> XML parser to continue and a parser signaling the first WF error and  
> continuing with the rest of the stream itself?


No black-box difference, but these boxes are not entirely black. If  
the authors of the XML box are being honest about conformance, then  
the difference is something like that between operating Guatanamo Bay  
oneself, and rendition of people to Egypt to be tortured.

Pat

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Received on Friday, 2 January 2009 17:32:55 UTC