Re: So if we can't fix everything, what can we fix?

On Mon, February 27, 2012 3:16 am, Tony Lavinio wrote:
...
> It seems to me if we have some good use-cases, then we can figure out the
> general scope of the work.
>
> For example:
...
> c. XML-ish document contains a free &.

c.1. XML-ish document contains a & followed by a well-known entity name
(maybe followed by a ;)
...
> And in each case, we can figure out what the user actually meant.

I don't think it's so much that we need to figure out what they meant,
'merely' figure out a consistent way to handle the errors, i.e., getting
back to the "that error-handling be completely deterministic, and that
[software] not compete on the basis of excellence in handling mangled
documents." idea from 1997 [1].  The extent to which the error recovery
handles the common use cases in a way that people commonly find sane will
be a factor in its success, but IMO only if it's also reliable,
consistent, and repeatable across software stacks.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
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[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-sgml-wg/1997May/0079.html

Received on Monday, 27 February 2012 15:17:35 UTC