Re: Parsing of HTML fragments

On 4/24/07, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Dão Gottwald wrote:
> > > If this WG adopts the WHATWG draft, I imagine this would be handled by
> > > the innerHTML parsing mode.
> >
> > Um, not necessarily. A feed consumer doesn't have to use innerHTML to
> > insert fragments into a given document. In fact, HTML fragments can be
> > delivered as XML nodes instead of CDATA.
>
> The "innerHTML parsing mode" isn't restricted to innerHTML; it's just a
> way to parse fragments with a particular context. You can use the
> algorithm described for innerHTML in the spec for other purposes, such as
> this one.
>


Seems like HTML fragments, such as embedded in Atom feeds, should contain
structure, rather than any specific presentation.  Plugging the fragment
into innerHTML should yield the same structure independent of the version or
mode of the parent document.  Presentation could be different, but
presentation should be controlled by the parent document.

A lot of this is going to depend on the application.  Guess the question is,
to pick a specific case - should the Atom spec disallow too-new HTML tags?
Should Atom disallow presentation-related tags (like <font>) that are
unlikely to play well in the parent document?