RE: MathML-in-HTML5

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Paul Topping wrote:
> 
> I sense some sort of conflicting themes here or perhaps I'm just 
> confused. Your earlier comments made me think that HTML 5 might be about 
> stronger validation

I don't really understand what this means. Stronger than what? In what 
sense?


> as you were worried about what MathPlayer might do with bad markup and 
> suggested that refusing to render the document might be the right 
> response.

I was merely pointing out that the term "XML islands" suggests XML-like 
processing, which would imply draconian error handling. I wasn't trying to 
imply that this was the better solution.


> So, this made me wonder what HTML 5 really was supposed to be. The name 
> would imply that it is HTML's tag soup extended with some new stuff like 
> MathML and, perhaps, with some of the worst soup removed if it was 
> deemed unnecessary to compatibility with all the HTML out in the world 
> and the tools that make it. I would also assume that since your WHATWG 
> document (http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/) seems to 
> distinguish between XHTML5 and HTML5 that they are versions of XHTML and 
> HTML enhanced in parallel ways. Am I wrong?

The WHATWG Web Apps 1.0 specification defines a set of features for Web 
browsers (mostly existing features previously defined in HTML4 and DOM2 
HTML, or implemented as proprietary extensions, though there are some new 
features as well). Most features are described in terms of DOM processing 
rules, e.g. new DOM interfaces or new rules for handling certain elements 
in DOM trees. In addition, it defines two serialisation syntaxes for 
representing documents/applications that use these features. One of these 
serialisations is just XML (with namespaces); some components of which are 
to be in the XHTML namespace and are therefore known as XHTML5. The other 
serialisation is a custom language known as HTML5; the specification 
defines very specific parsing rules (including error handling rules) for 
how to obtain a DOM tree from an HTML5 file.

In the context of HTML5 the term "tag soup" is meaningless, since there 
is no UA-defined handling anymore, the spec defines all handling (in an 
attempt to foster increased interoperability).

HTH,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2006 23:02:46 UTC