- From: Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:10:52 +0000
- To: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>, "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>
Håkon Wium Lie wrote: > Yes. Draconian error handling was a mistake; it punishes users and > rewards implementations that break the standard. A simple error > recovery mechinanism would have made XML web-friendly and the world > would, possibly, have been different. Håkon, I very rarely disagree with you, but on this occasion I believe you are wrong. Why does one need to pander to ill-formed content in order to be "web friendly" ? The responsibility for producing valid XML lies 100% with the producer (yes, I know that is a tautology) : if the producer fails in his responsibilities, then no-one (and, even more importantly, nothing) can know what his intentions were. Thus it is far better to say "Sorry, this document is not valid XML; please refer to the author" than to say (in effect) "This document is invalid XML, but we will make a guess at the author intended; if we have guessed wrongly, and you end up buying 100kg cocaine instead of the DVD you wanted, then we take no responsibility : we did our best to interpret an invalid document, and this is the result. Caveat emptor". Philip TAYLOR
Received on Monday, 17 November 2008 08:11:33 UTC