Re: The interpretation of script

Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com> writes:
> On Jan 17, 2011, at 22:48 , Norman Walsh wrote:
>> John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> writes:
>>> Norman Walsh scripsit:
>>>> In principle, there's no reasy why the browser couldn't equally
>>>> execute application/xslt+xml or application/xproc+xml or
>>>> application/normslanguage content.
>>> 
>>> I think this is more of a theoretical than a practical problem.  Despite
>>> the code/data duality of XML (and Lisp), we typically know whether a given
>>> piece of text is code or data.  The underpinnings of the xqib system know
>>> that browsers treat application/xquery as inert data, but they make it
>>> their job to give it an interpretation as a script.  If you don't want
>>> your XQuery interpreted as a script, give it a media type of text/plain.
>> 
>> I think the implication is that text/javascript is the only type of
>> script that will ever execute automatically. Even if we totally
>> replace JavaScript with some new language in 20 years, we'll still
>> have to shim it in place with JavaScript.
>
> I don't think that we can work on this assumption. There are always
> new languages being developed, an increasing number of which are
> shimmed with JS in the browser. If one of them becomes particularly
> popular though, it doesn't seem impossible that it might start being
> supported directly in the browser. Transitioning to a state where
> the shim could be done without would take a good decade, but that's
> not such a scary time frame.

So that which has been static data in thousands of legacy web pages will
spontaneously become executed? Lovely.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
Lead Engineer
MarkLogic Corporation
www.marklogic.com