Re: unescaping markup

/ Alessandro Vernet <avernet@orbeon.com> was heard to say:
| On 5/15/07, Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:
|> Are there any actual use cases for content-types other than
|> application/xml (or application/*+xml) and text/html?
|
| What about XML that is not well-formed, but is not XHTML either? What

XML that isn't well formed isn't XML.

| would be the content type we need to set so the component runs
| TagSoup?

As I understand it, we'd say something like this:

The process of unescaping markup depends on the content-type requested.
Processors are required to recognize application/xml, application/*+xml,
and text/html.

For application/xml and application/*+xml, the only operation performed
is unescaping. If the result is not well-formed, the step must fail.

For text/html, the content is first unescaped and then examined for
well-formedness. For the purpose of well-formedness checking, the
elements named "IMG", "BR", "HR", (etc.) are treated as empty.

If the resulting document is not well-formed, the processor applies
an implementation-dependent process to assure that the result is well
formed.

For all other content types, it is a dynamic error (XXX) if the
processor does not support the content type. If the content type is
supported, then it is unescaped and converted to well-formed XML using
an implementation-dependent algorithm.

|> This all seems to expose complexity and interoperability issues that
|> don't have much obvious value.
|
| Yes, I would find a simple flag easier to understand. What use case
| are we covering using a content type that we wouldn't be covering with
| a simple flag?

Despite what I wrote above, I'm still sympathetic to a simple flag
myself. We're designing for extensibility that we don't need. Of course,
that's the nature of extensibility, isn't it?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Great success is commoner than real
http://nwalsh.com/            | abilities.-- Vauvenargues