- From: Terje Bless <link@pobox.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:38:34 +0200
- To: W3C HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 ian@hixie.ch (Ian Hickson) wrote: >It is a huge problem, IMHO, because most developers aren't >competent by that definition. Also, I _want_ my tools to catch >as many errors as possible. Having the spec artificially limit >what errors can be caught seems like an unnecessary limitation. >(And if we do have a spec schema, and it doesn't catch >everything, you know people will claim that conformance >checkers that catch mistakes the spec schema wouldn't flag are >buggy and are reporting bogus errors. The classic case being for SGML Validators reporting things not defined in the DTD because the relevant criteria was not expressible using that “schema”. However, nothing prevents — in fact it's quite common in IETF specs — the normative definition in a schema language (EBNF for the IETF case) being augmented by prose descriptions when the schema language makes the constraint awkward or impossible to express. A simple note informing the reader that this is the case is usually sufficient for these exceptions. There is no good reason why a normative definition in a schema syntax should not be accompanied by good prose and the two are certainly not mutually exclusive options (quite the contrary). - -- I have lobbied for the update and improvement of SGML. I've done it for years. I consider it the jewel for which XML is a setting. It does deserve a bit of polishing now and then. - -- Len Bullard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP SDK 3.8.1 wj8DBQFGI/rpo/I+siR19ewRAl6PAKC4WPeoY9iLXMB9rzE/tb2ZR9XzhgCeIiY5 Otv7HUfQpfgNf/O+8CPlzQg=q4KP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Monday, 16 April 2007 22:38:41 UTC