Re: XML namespaces on the Web

Liam Quin wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 01:43:12PM -0500, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>> On 11/17/09 1:40 PM, John Cowan wrote:
>>> Nothing prevents browsers from doing so today.
>> The XML spec does, last I checked...
>
> As John Cowan has said, that's not actually true.
>
> To amplify a little... the XML Spec says (in essence)
> that software that takes something (anything at all)
> that is not well-formed XML, can turn it into XML, but,
> if it does, it must not claim that the original input
> was XML.

If that is really the case, then that is a problem because of the lack 
of defined error recovery behaviour.  If applications were simply free 
to conclude that the document isn't XML and then do whatever they want 
with it (other than just aborting), that leads to a serious lack of 
interoperability.  It's the situation we're already in with feeds, and 
it's a serious issue that needs to be resolved.

John Cowan wrote:
> On the other hand, it is neither concise nor forgiving; for that,
> browsers have HTML.  What's the point of blurring the line?

The issue is that there are other applications and use cases beyond HTML 
for which a sensible, general purpose, interoperable, non-draconian 
model is more appropriate than what we currently have with XML (Notably, 
RSS/Atom feeds).  HTML parsing does not address these cases because, due 
to legacy constraints, it doesn't provide sensible, generable purpose 
parsing.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Tuesday, 17 November 2009 19:26:56 UTC