- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 18:26:53 +0200
- To: David Dorward <david@dorward.me.uk>
- Cc: www-validator@w3.org
On Jun 6, 2005, at 5:44 PM, David Dorward wrote: > So no telling the user that their document doesn't follow the DTD they > claim to be using (which is the whole point of validation)? That > sounds rather ... wrong. [...] > If you want to use a language other then (X)HTML and still validate, > then use a Doctype that references a custom DTD (and be aware that the > document IS non-standard and ISN'T HTML). Reading the HTML spec, I am somewhat torn; on the one hand, it says that it's based on SGML, and therefore has a DTD; on the other, the conformance section explicitly says that the spec does not define what to do with extension elements and attributes. Is there a definitive reading of this from the HTML WG (please provide a reference to their minutes or a WG document if so)? The whole point of microformats is to adorn valid HTML with extra metadata that machines can use. If using a microformat means it's not HTML, you can't use a media type that will reliably render in browsers. If this is indeed the case, then HTML got its extensibility story wrong; it's important to be able to add backwards-compatible extensions (e.g., microformats) without affecting validity. As a result, people who want this kind of functionality (a set of people that is growing; witness what Google is doing) will have no choice but to ignore validity. That would not be a good situation, in my opinion. -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Monday, 6 June 2005 16:26:57 UTC