- From: Paul Prescod <papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
- Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 10:51:33 -0500 (EST)
- To: digitome@iol.ie (Digitome Ltd.)
- Cc: w3c-sgml-wg@www10.w3.org
> After the promised land is reached, and all XML browsers support DTDs this will
> result in a "legacy XML" situation where Hypertext etc. has been hard-wired
> via attributes and thus that much more difficult to maintain :-((("
>
> Is this the case?
>
> If so, the only way of circumventing this that I can see is getting the
> browser and
> the server to hand-shake to agree on the browsers capabilities.
>
> DTD-Challenged XML Client gets a "SPAMmed" version of the XML document.
> DTD-Aware XML CLient gets Instance + DTD.
My experience is that browsers change more often than servers. Depending on
server-side features is probably not feasible in the short term. While I
would gladly install the latest and greatest browser just because it gave
me access to some XML files, most system adminstrators would not install
a new Web server so easily. They are a little more flexible with
CGI, but even getting a new CGI widely installed would be a challenge.
Anyhow, your requirements do not seem to have anything to do with client-server
negotiation. Why not SPAM the document *once* and serve it to everybody,
DTD aware or not? That leaves the author in control instead of the web
server/system administrator.
Paul Prescod
Received on Sunday, 5 January 1997 10:52:02 UTC