Re: DTD driven browsers and real world HTML

In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 19 Jan 1999 21:11:57 +0000."
             <199901192111.VAA17803@saracen.bts.co.uk> 

> If Amaya is to move towards a browser rather than an editor, it needs 
> to be much more tolerant of real world HTML than is possible with a 
> strict DTD based parser.

Amaya is not moving towards a browser. We added the possibility to prevent
documents to be edited by error. Some times documents are downloaded only to
copy information or to make or test a link.

If Amaya was not tolerant it had rejected the document. But what you're asking 
is
that all browsers manage errors in the same way. What I would prefer is that 
users
ask altavista page providers to build valid HTML pages and avoid these errors.
The HTML structure is not so complex. It takes two minutes to put the <FOPRM>
</FORM> around the Table, but days of work to understand at parsing time what 
the
author wanted to do.

> 
> E.g. this afternoon, at least, the main page for 
> http://www.altavista.com/ contained the illegal sequence:
> 
> TABLE
> FORM
> INPUT
> TBODY
> 
> Amaya deleted FORM and INPUT, in its error recovery (validator.w3.org 
> seems to close the table instead).  The result was that it was 
> impossible to make a search!
> 
> (Lynx has had to go as far as both a DTD based parser and a process 
> tag semantics in isolation parser, in order to both be correct and 
> useable.)
> 
> -- 
> David Woolley - Office: David Woolley <djw@bts.co.uk>
> BTS             Home: <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
> Wallington      TQ 2887 6421
> England         51  21' 44" N,  00  09' 01" W (WGS 84)
> 

  Irene.

Received on Wednesday, 20 January 1999 03:06:16 UTC