- From: Paul Prescod <papresco@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
- Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 23:41:30 -0400
- To: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- CC: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
You forgot one tolerant point and I would like you to address it please. It falls naturally out of the draconian: Tim Bray wrote: > I think I am speaking fairly for the draconians when I say that from > our point of view, it works because > - well-formedness is so easy that it isn't a significant burden on anyone, Well-formedness is such a small step on the way to a useful document that it isn't of particular *value* to anyone: so why all the fuss? How many applications that will be able to read a well-formed XML document and do something useful with it? ... > - 15 minutes after the draconian browsers ship, everyone > will have forgotten gratefully about the bad old days, and No, there will be new bad old days with broken links, mismatched attributes, invalid content models, broken stylesheets etc. etc. etc. I really don't understand how being draconian in this one case solves anything. I think that there is a certain amount of fantasizing going on: "If only we could not repeat the HTML mess." "If only we had been strict about well-formedness." HTML would still be a MESS! For every improperly formed HTML document there is one that uses an element in an invalid place or an HTML element that has never been defined in a DTD anywhere (well, except HTML Pro :) ). We can be totally draconian when it comes to well-formedness and the Web will be just as messy, nasty a place tomorrow Paul Prescod
Received on Wednesday, 7 May 1997 01:47:32 UTC