Re: PROPOSED test cases 0127 and 0128 - empty xmlns attribute values

Hi Shane,

> Hrm...... I strongly disagree.   RDFa in XHTML defines, in clause 4.3, RDFa
> Processor Conformance.  Such a processor, in the context of XHTML, is an XML
> Application - not an XML parser.  It is not up to an RDFa Processor *at all*
> to raise a fatal error when it encounters a well-formedness error.  It
> *might* be up to the underlying XML parser, but I don't know if it is really
> a requirement that there be a fatal error in this case.
>
> This really comes down to something that has been discussed a few times, but
> perhaps not state clearly enough...  The architecture of RDFa, and in
> particular an RDFa Processor, exists independent of the underlying parsing
> model for the input - at least conceptually.  There may be requirements on
> these underlying parsers (XML well-formedness, HTML 5 parsing rules, tag
> soup rules, etc.), but those requirements are imposed on the input stream
> BEFORE that stream is seen by an RDFa Processor.  In my mind, this is true
> regardless of whether the RDFa Processor is a component of a tool chain or a
> free standing implementation.  The RDFa Syntax Recommendation makes no
> representation about how the input is *parsed*.
>
> Mark, Ralph, Steven - what's your opinion?

I very much agree with you.

We did try to use general notions like 'child nodes' and so on, in the
parsing rules, rather than anything more explicit, so that -- as you
say -- an RDFa parser could conceptually sit on top of SAX, a DOM, and
anything else that might come along.

So I agree that it's not our job to 'abort parsing' if the underlying
processor has not decided to do so. (Which does raise the question
about what @xmlns:xyz="" means, but I'm looking at that in a separate
email.)

Regards,

Mark

-- 
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

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Received on Friday, 5 June 2009 09:43:20 UTC