Re: XML incremental rendering, was Re: Standards mode and Quirks mode (was Re: [CSS21] Test Suite)

Andrew Fedoniouk writes:
> See: If a user agent encounters an element it does not recognize: 
> 
> XHTML: "must process the element's content."
> HTML:  "should try to render the element's content" 
> 
> It is not exactly same thing - HTML will try to render, XHTML will process 
> - I have no idea what this "process" means here.

I read it the same thing as 'render', if we're talking about a visual UA. I 
think the change probably just reflects a greater emphasis on not assuming 
that UA = visual web browser. 

> "In order to be consistent with the XML 1.0 Recommendation [XML], the user
> agent must parse and evaluate an XHTML document for well-formedness. If
> the user agent claims to be a validating user agent, it must also validate
> documents against their referenced DTDs according to [XML]. " 
> 
> Actually this is even more strict: in general validation against DTD could
> not be done on partial content.

XHTML UAs don't have to be validating UAs. 

Anyway, the XHTML spec doesn't define *when* the UA should carry out this 
validation, nor what a UA should *do* with a non-well-formed document once 
it's found one. You're assuming that it should refuse to render it, but the 
spec doesn't say that; it's not even prohibited by the XML spec. 

Regards,
Malcolm

Received on Tuesday, 27 July 2004 16:43:45 UTC