Re: Final words, I think, on error handling

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