Re: XML namespaces on the Web

On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:37:28 -0000, Krzysztof Maczyński <1981km@gmail.com>  
wrote:

>> 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).
> If you use a feed to e.g. remotely control an army, probably you'd  
> rather have it strictly parsed (I certainly would, but I would, and  
> actually do, also for casual HTML authoring, so don't look at me to  
> determine the other end of the spectrum). The complexity and sensitivity  
> of tag soup parsing make it a toy language suitable for toy use cases  
> only.

You're presenting false dilemma between properly generated well-formed XML  
and "tag soup". It is possible to properly generate HTML as well, and have  
it unambiguously parsed by all user agents. In fact, it isn't much  
different from proper way of generating XML. In many tools usually used  
for generating XML it's just a matter of changing output format from XML  
to HTML.

In case of controlling of an army, draconian handling of XML isn't enough,  
and relying on it would give false sense of security. Such important  
communication channel must use encryption and cryptographic verification  
of message integrity, which gives draconian error handling for any  
payload, with true security.

I'm not advocating replacing of all XML with HTML, but only pointing out  
that calling HTML "toy language suitable for toy use cases only" is a  
great exaggeration and ignores the fact that HTML has proven to be  
suitable for 99% of the web so far. I wouldn't even be surprised if HTML  
mail was involved in controlling of some armies today.

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesinski

Received on Sunday, 22 November 2009 17:21:56 UTC