Re: [CSS21] Wider variety of (non-junk) examples requested

On Saturday, August 27, 2005, 10:15:10 AM, Bjoern wrote:

BH> * Chris Lilley wrote:
>>How do we know that? Its *potentially* an extract of a valid HTML 4.01
>>document. Its "feasibly valid". But if, for example, it was a child of
>>head, or title, or img, or P, then it would not be valid.

BH> Oh please, you already pointed out that XHTML fragments as used in the
BH> CDF drafts are no problem whatsoever

since they are well formed xml documents in themselves, thats correct

BH> even though these are subject to
BH> the same "problem".

Actually no.

BH> It's sad you need to resort to talking about
BH> "junk", "minimum quality", "error-correcting parsing modes",
BH> "unambiguous parsing", "invalid or malformed examples", and other
BH> nonsense like the above or

Its indeed sad that this is the state of parsing non-XML. Since CSS
works on a parse tree, this can be significant.

>>The idea that ordinary mortals will be so perturbed by a closing </P> or
>>whatever that their heads explode rang hollow when I first heard it in
>>1993 or thereabouts, and sounds even less likely now.

BH> to back your request to use less HTML syntax. HTML fragments are just
BH> as fine as XHTML fragments.

Apart from not having a defining specification (beyond the SGML one you
cited, which is fine except that the HTML browsers don't use SGML, of
course).

BH>  You'd like the CSS specifications to use
BH> more XML/XHTML syntax and the Working Group agrees,

Ah - good. That wasn't clear at all.

BH>  as Ian pointed
BH> out, new examples typically aren't HTML examples. You don't even
BH> insist on using XHTML,

Feel free, but the request was only for a minimum quality level.

BH> adding some end tags and quote marks here and
BH> there

The overall process is called "being well formed", I gather.

BH> and pretending the HTML fragments are in some hypothetical XML
BH> format  is apparently fine, too.

As a minimum, yes.

BH> You've even agreed that stating that the HTML fragments are legal SGML
BH> text entities with respect to the HTML4 SGML declaration, DTD, etc is
BH> satisfactory, even though that's just a complicated way of saying that
BH> HTML4 fragments are HTML4 fragments.

Its also a complicated way of pretending that te SGML specification has
some sort of connection with HTML browsers, which we both know is not
true in practice either. But I asked for a definition and you provided
one, so that was fine in a way.


BH> So you aren't really requesting anything here,

Actually I  (and CDF and SVG WG) are requesting something - specific
changes to the specification. Many of the comments fall into similar
categories - trying to get some clarity on whether CSS 2.1 is aimed at
using with XML, or just at (X)HTML. And some progress towards that
clarity has been made in the last couple of days.


-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead

Received on Tuesday, 30 August 2005 00:50:59 UTC