Re: How to refer to place of document, which is not marked by author!?

On Apr 30, 2007, at 2:26 PM, Arthur Jennings wrote:

> On 4/28/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> >> (Side note: when people here say "tag soup" do they mean "non-
> >> conforming HTML" or "any HTML"? I can't really tell from general
> >> usage of the term. I always assumed it specifically meant non-
> >> conforming or otherwise "bad" markup, but people seem to use it as
> >> a dismissive way to refer to anything in HTML syntax.)
> >
> > Can't speak for others, but I meant "non-conforming HTML", but
> > since you can't generically know which is which form a URL, it is
> > effectively "any HTML."
>
> You can't generically know if something is HTML at all from a URL -
> it could be XHTML, SVG or a PNG image. Even if the URL ends in
> ".html". Does that make XHTML and PNG "tag soup"? I don't think that
> is what most people mean.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
> This WikiPedia article < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_soup>  
> currently says "Because web browsers have always treated HTML  
> errors leniently, tag soup is also used by browser implementers to  
> refer to all HTML. HTML must be treated by web browsers as tag soup  
> in comparison to XML where errors need not, and should not, be  
> corrected according to the specification."
>
> So the authors seem to be saying that HTML == Tag Soup.  
> Unfortunately, the article does not cite sources.

I don't think I've heard a browser implementor use "tag soup" this  
way. In my experience, browser implementors tend not to use the term  
"tag soup" much at all, since we are more interested in presenting  
content to users than passing judgments on its quality. Anyway, I  
hope maybe we can stay away from this term since it tends to imply to  
the syllogism: "Tag soup is bad; all HTML is tag soup; therefore all  
HTML is bad". As a working group, we probably don't endorse that  
assessment.

How about we say "HTML" or "non-conforming HTML" or "invalid HTML"  
depending on what we mean.

Regards,
Maciej