[Bug 12073] Permit restricted use of <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12073

--- Comment #4 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 2011-02-16 09:37:51 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> It's pretty easy to delete a line in text editor, so I don't think editor's
> templates are strong enough justification for the change.

To delete a line in the source code in a text editor is a huge step for many
Web content authors.

As for those who are able to do delete lines: many times it is difficult or
impossible to change the template of a WYSIWYG editor. Thus, one would have to
post-edit the code that the WYSIWYG editor creates, to get it right. This is
simple to do once, but if you have to edit the source code each time you edit
that page with that WYSIWYG editor, then it becomes tedious.

> As for XML tools, you can't use XML serializers to reliably create correct
> polyglot documents.

I did not have "XML serializers" in mind. I have in mind WYSIWYG types of XHTML
editors.

> Tools that insist on XML declaration are obviously unaware of polyglot
> requirements

I agree. Except that it seems to be common to be wanting to place IE6 in
QuirksMode. And <?xml version="1.0" ?> is the simple way to get that effect.

>  and are not going to obey many other more important rules. 

Here I believe you are incorrect: For the type of tools that I have in mind -
WYSIWYG XHTML editors - it is actualy quite common to produce source code that
is largely polyglot. 

Examples of WYSIWYG editors which largely produce polyglot XHTML: Amaya,
Mozilla/Gecko based editors, Oxygen in XHTML modes, Xopus, Xstandard. And
probably most other WYSIWYG XHTML editors that are able to produce XHTML 1.0
code.

> And we
> already know it's impossible to make HTML compatible with any output XML
> serializer could generate.
> 
> In the end if you want to serialize polyglot documents, you MUST have polyglot
> serializer, and polyglot serializers won't force an XML declaration.

AGAIN: polyglot serializers exist - most WYSIWYG XHTML editors are, in fact,
largely polyglot. In many cases, the XML declaration is the only piece of code
that breaks with polyglot markup.

As for your last statement, that «polyglot serializers won't force an XML
declaration»:
   a) that is a tautological statement. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric)
   b) then you treat the XML declaration as the quint-essential  symbol that
shows if the code is polyglot or not. I do not understand what you base that
on. If a HTML document brings a  *conforming* HTML5 **parser** lands in
quirksmode then  we can be certain that that particular document is not
polyglot.  So far so good. However, only non-conforming HTML5 parsers are
placed in QuirksMode because of the XML declaration. Therefore, for
**authors**,  provided that  the XML declaration becomes *permitted* (the way I
suggest in this bug) by the HTML5 specification, then it would be perfectly
polyglot to use the XML declaration in polyglot code. (Again, IE6 is not
conforming.)

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Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 09:37:55 UTC