Re: XHTML character entity support

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 31, 2009, at 6:22 PM, Shelley Powers wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Yes, how the browsers work when it comes to DTDs and named entities
>> has come up in the past [1][2].
>>
>> Case in point, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome don't allow named entities
>> in XHTML+RDFa documents, even though the XHTML+RDFa DTD does reference
>> the named entities.
>>
>> Oops
>>
>> But, still, we manage. We use numeric entities.
>
> I think it's fine to omit named entities from newly minted DTDs. In fact,
> probably a good idea since it's the strict XML behavior and nothing stops
> you from using an NCR or just a literal unicode character in new content.
>
> But browsers need to handle named entities when some specific XHTML DTDs are
> present, since there is a body of legacy content that depends on having the
> XHTML set of entities. Handling content with the XHTML+RDFa DTD does not
> have this constraint.
>

I can understand, and not. XHTML from the very beginning had rules
having to do with named entities, and this has always been a
constraint.

Regardless, there is no legacy content for HTML5.


> Note: we'd rather not have this behavior in WebKit but we added it due to
> compatibility bugs being filed. I expect any XHTML-capable browser would
> eventually be pressured to add similar behavior. Non-browser tools that
> process XHTML from the Web may also benefit from doing the same thing.
>

But those that don't will respect named entities in RDFa in XHTML,
while browsers don't. You start bending rules, and you add, rather
than remove inconsistencies.

> Regards,
> Maciej
>

Shelley

Received on Sunday, 1 November 2009 02:38:19 UTC