[closed] Re: Browsers and profiles

At the 13 Oct telcon, we agreed that this issue was closed

Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:
> Perhaps I'm just feeling grumpy today...
>
> It strikes me that the browser case is the important use case for the
> processor profiles document. Tools built on top of real XML parsers
> can almost all be persuaded to do the modest and/or recommended
> profiles. So there's definitely value in having the document for other
> XML specs, but it probably matters less what it actually says for
> those cases because they're mostly flexible.
>
> If we accept that browsers aren't going to change, they're never going
> to do the modest or recommended profiles.
>
> So we've produced a document that recommends the impossible. That
> seems ... unhelpful.
>
> I have an inflamatory proposal.
>
> Rename the "recommended" profile to "comprehensive"
> Rename the "basic" profile to "recommended".
> Drop the "modest" profile into the bit bucket.
>
> So we have minimal, recommended, and comprehensive. Three profiles
> instead of four and better names. The recommended profile doesn't do
> what we might have hoped, but it does what the browsers do (or might
> be persuaded to do) so most folks will think that the browsers are
> doing the recommended thing and that's nice.
>
> Us old timers who still sometimes use external subsets ought to drag
> our lazy selves into the twenty-first century and just stop.
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
Lead Engineer
MarkLogic Corporation
Phone: +1 413 624 6676
www.marklogic.com