Re: ERB votes on error handling

Very interesting.

I object strenusously to both the outcome of this "vote" and the process
itself. Clearly consensus was not even remotely reached on this issue. Any
review of the archives would show this as would a simple count of the "votes".

Tim Bray wrote:

>    When an XML processor encounters a violation of a well-formedness 
>    constraint, it must report this error to the application.  It may 
>    continue processing the data to search for further errors, and report 
>    such errors to the application.  In order to support correction of 
>    errors, it may make the unprocessed text from the document, with 
>    intermingled character data and markup, available to the application.
> 
>    Once such a violation is detected, however, the processor must not
>    continue the process, described in [ref. to language in point 1],
>    of passing character data extracted from markup, and description
>    of the logical document structure expressed by the markup, to the 
>    application.

This language precludes the development of a class of "conforming" 
applications that require access to either mal-formed data or partial
well-formed data unless they access that data using something other
than an XML processor. This includes editors and any application that
reads a portion of a stream of information - e.g. a broadcast application.

     <CNN-HEADLINE-NEWS>
-->    <STORY><HEADLINE>Cat saved</HEADLINE>  ... </STORY>
       <STORY><HEADLINE>Nuclear War</HEADLINE> ... </STORY>
       .
       .
       .
      </CNN-HEADLINE-NEWS>

In the snippit above, if CNN is braodcasting XML and I "tune in" at the -->,
I will read the story about the lucky cat but won't hear about nuclear war
unless CNN does something non-conforming. They probably will be forced to.

Again, I object strenuously to this vote.

Received on Wednesday, 7 May 1997 15:31:30 UTC