- From: Len Bullard <cbullard@HiWAAY.net>
- Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 11:58:18 -0600
- To: Gavin Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>
- CC: tbray@textuality.com, w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
Gavin Nicol wrote: > > >It for sure is not valid. The controversial question at this point is, > >should the XML spec bless a state called well-formedness without requiring > >a <!DOCTYPE? Even though I think a <!DOCTYPE is a good idea, I think > >the XML spec *should* so bless XML fragments, because they're going to > >happen anyhow, blessed or unblessed; successful standards do not rule > >out typical everyday behavior. > > The last sentence here is something we would all do well to remember. > No matter what we do, users are the ones who have the last say, and > one option they have is ognoring the spec, or walking away from it. Nope. Users use software provided by vendors that don't have the option to ignore the standard. Software makes or breaks the rules. Bad practice is bad practice. No undefined exceptions. The programmer can apply it as_is_sensible, but without agreements honored and a means to verify that, the situation becomes what it is for HTMLduJour. I can easily find out what is HTML and what is NetscapeToday. A fragment by definition is not a valid SGML document so why should an XML fragment be? Or is it? Can someone define "fragment"? I can reset the doctype and parse within a subtree of a DTD-constrained instance. So, is a fragment contiguous, or a set of disjunct elements? len
Received on Monday, 28 October 1996 12:57:58 UTC