Re: XHTML Ruby specification error handling rules

Hello Ian,

At 01:17 05/07/03, Ian Hickson wrote:

 >Hi,
 >
 >I have been looking at the Ruby specification:
 >
 >   http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/

Thanks!

 >...with the intent of writing test cases and adding Ruby support to the
 >HTML5 specification [1],

<rant>
I'm not really sure it's appropriate to use a name such as HTML5
for a project that's essentially trying to legitimize broken
behavior so that some browser manufacturers can try claim that
they are not just following the broken behavior used by the
market leader, just at a moment when that market leader finally
shows some signs of moving ahead, hopefully in the right direction.
</rant>

 >as a step towards encouraging implementations of
 >Ruby in Web browsers.
 >
 >However, I have run into a problem. In the conformance section, it states
 >that an interpreter must reject non-conformant Ruby markup, but Web
 >browsers are effectively unable to do this, primarily because Web authors
 >have been conditioned to expect browsers to handle errors,

Well, yes, for old crap. There is no such need for new stuff, I hope.

 >but also
 >because conformance checking is an expensive operation, and rendering is a
 >performance-sensitive operation.

I understand that rendering is expensive. I'm not exactly sure
why conformance checking should be that expensive. Could you explain?

 >To be able to put Ruby in HTML5, therefore, I need a Ruby processing model
 >that is well-defined even in the face of bogus markup,

What do you mean by bogus markup? No end quotes on attributes?
Missing end tags? Interleaving start and end tags? Or what else?
Without such information, I have no clue where we should start.
Correct markup is well defined. Bogus markup is a very wide field.
This is the main reason why trying to do something like "well-defined
even in the face of bogus markup" is an extremely hard task.

Regards,    Martin.

 >yet does not
 >require careful checking of the document conformance, and does not involve
 >having to reject documents that have non-conforming markup. (Such a model
 >would also, ideally, be compatible with the CSS Ruby model.)
 >
 >Unfortunately I am not well-versed in Ruby matters and therefore do not
 >know how to write such a processing model.
 >
 >Would anyone be able to write such a processing model, or give me enough
 >informantion on typical use cases, typical authoring mistakes, and the
 >like, to enable me to do so?
 >
 >
 >Incidentally, is there a document somewhere where I can read the CR
 >implementation report for Ruby? I would be interested in examining the
 >test suite that was used to verify interoperability, as well as testing
 >the implementations that were found to be interoperable to see how they
 >handle various error conditions.
 >
 >-- Footnotes --
 >[1] http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/
 >
 >Cheers,
 >--
 >Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
 >http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
 >Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 04:57:10 UTC