- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 11:41:09 +0000
Jim Ley wrote: > On 2/5/06, James Graham <jg307 at cam.ac.uk> wrote: >> Jim Ley wrote: >>> On 2/5/06, James Graham <jg307 at cam.ac.uk> wrote: >>> DOM 3 XPath is of course only defined for XML, whilst it's no trouble >>> defining it for valid HTML, it's not currently, for this reason I >>> would prefer just having a CSSSelector method and not bothering with >>> an XPath one, defining XPath for HTML is a bit of a pain - indeed I'm >>> not completely confident it's possible on an invalid HTML document >>> until after the document has finished loading. >> In practice it works fine in Mozilla for HTML which, given it's DOM >> functionality, isn't so surprising since both XML and HTML end up >> constructing a DOM. > > "in practice" isn't really good enough for a specification any more, > it was when HTML 4.01 or DOM 1 or DOM 2 or CSS 1 or CSS 2 came out, it > is no longer, and specifications are actually getting proper reviews > now. If it really is unspecified in HTML (even though a DOM is constructed) a reasonable specification could be derived from the Mozilla behavior. That is approximately the path that has been taken with <canvas> (Safari), XMLHttpRequest (IE), HTML parsing (Mozilla, Safari, Opera) and so on. Indeed firming up the specification of useful, implemented, behaviors is one of the aims of the WHATWG.
Received on Sunday, 5 February 2006 03:41:09 UTC