Re: Serving generic XML (was: storing info in XSL-FO: new issue?)

At 12:36 AM -0700 8/19/02, kynn@idyllmtn.com wrote:


>WCAG 1.0, checkpoint 6.1:
>
>http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#gl-new-technologies
>
>6.1 Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For
>     example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated
>     style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document.
>
>It is not possible to "read" (understand) arbitrary XML without a
>stylesheet; it is (to the UA) a collection of tags without semantics.
>(This is different from the case of XHTML, which is not arbitrary
>XML.)
>

This is taken out of context. 6.1 is part of Guideline 6, "Ensure 
that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully." 
"Although content developers are encouraged to use new technologies 
that solve problems raised by existing technologies, they should know 
how to make their pages still work with older browsers and people who 
choose to turn off features." Guideline 6 is not an end in itself. It 
is a sop thrown to older browsers.

If we're talking about sending arbitrary XML or XHTML 2, we've pretty 
much thrown backwards compatibility out the window already. Comparing 
arbitrary XML to XHTML 2, it's a wash. Some of XHTML 2 could be 
processed by all  browsers, but all of arbitrary XML+stylesheet could 
be processed by some browsers. You can support some of the browsers 
all of the time, or all of the browsers some of the time, but you 
can't support all of the browsers all of the time.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
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Received on Monday, 19 August 2002 08:47:56 UTC