Re: XML namespaces on the Web

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:32:39 +0100, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> ...
>> I've been trying to figure out where exactly the disagreement 
>> between us lies, but I think we can all agree on the following:
>> 
>> 1. There are applications that have the need and/or desire to implement
>>    non-draconian error recovery for documents created with the
>>    intention of being XML, but for whatever reason are not well-formed.
>> 
>> 2. In order to achieve interoperability among such applications, it is
>>    necessary to have a specification that clearly defines how to parse
>>    documents intended to be XML and recover from any fatal errors.
>> ...
> 
> For the record, I do not support 1), thus also not 2).

Considering John and Aryeh's discussion ... 

> On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:41:23 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>> Aryeh Gregor scripsit: [...]
>>> Does this sound good to you?  So no one would say a malformed document
>>> is XML, but there would be an algorithm to make it into XML.
>> 
>> Seems about right.

... then I am not certain that Aryah and Lachlan agree 100% about how 
it should work. It seems to me that Aryah's idea is (and I don't know 
if Lachlan agree) that the user agent MUST make it clear that the 
recovered version of the document is not XML anymore. Don't you support 
this? 

Currently, Opera, if you serve it a malformed XHTML document, then it 
reports an error an gives you the offer to click a button/link to see 
the document interpreted as HTML. (Neither Webkit nor Firefox have the 
same option.)  Is this also something that you (eventually) do not 
support?

Eventually, whenever HTML5 and HTML6 becomes a reality, including 
namespaces and all - more aligned with XML as Maciej spoke of, then one 
could - instead of XML5-recovery - do like Opera already does: Simply 
offer to interpret the document as HTML. If that would be acceptable 
... 

The problem with XML5, as I see it, is that I don't understand what we 
need text/HTML if there is a way to interpret XML as "HTXML". Therefore 
it seems more plausible to me to align HTML and XML so that HTML 
becomes the recovery format for XML - which it already to a large 
extent is (just consider XHTML served as text/HTML). We would then get 
two kinds of HTML: "HTML served as text/HTML" and "Should-have-been-XML 
HTML". We already have both forms, if we consider XHTML served as 
text/HTML. (Except that we don't demand any fatal error message for 
XHTML served as text/HTML.)

But I realize that Aryah did not believe in text/HTML as the 
recovery/error tolerant format due to all the special requirements that 
text/HTML has.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 18 November 2009 16:14:08 UTC