- From: Jon Bosak <bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM>
- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:46:00 -0700
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
- CC: bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM
The ERB wishes to clarify the discussion arising from the suggestion that we make it possible to grandfather existing valid HTML documents as valid XML documents without changing them in any way. We certainly do wish to make Joe Homepage comfortable, but we wish to accomplish this by moving him into a new home. The way to do this is to ensure that existing valid HTML documents can straightforwardly be converted to XML documents without any loss of information using a generally available normalization tool. In particular, it should be easy for the developers of XML applications such as XML Web browsers to build in converters that will map HTML to XML on the fly. But a requirement that existing valid HTML documents be valid XML documents with no changes whatsoever would impose unacceptable limitations on our ability to design the best possible SGML application profile for documents on the Web. It is a design goal of XML to function as a metalanguage for document markup on the Web. It is not a design goal of XML to automatically grandfather in existing HTML documents or documents conformant to any other specific SGML markup language. Jon Bosak ERB/WG Chair
Received on Wednesday, 18 September 1996 13:52:23 UTC