Re: Scripting DTD's

AaronEldreth@cs.com wrote:
> lhunt07@postoffice.csu.edu.au wrote:
> 
>  > XHTML is not and should not be a programming language.
> 
> Why?
> 
>  > XHTML is called "Extensible HyperText Markup Language", NOT 
> "Extensible HyperText
>  > Multipurpose Language", and, therfore, it is designed for marking up
>  > structure in documents only, and that's how it should stay. Scripting
>  > XML documents is the domain of the Document Object Model [DOM] and the
>  > scripting language standards, like ECMAScript [ECMA-262].
> 
> This is true. Even I will give that credit, exept for one thing. The DOM 
> would still be necessary,
> otherwise it would be impossible to access elements. Unless my idea were 
> taken even
> further, and allowed people to create their own DOM, but that would get 
> UGLY. ECMAScript
> is supposed to be the great universal scripting language for the web, 
> unfortunately,
> few people use it. How many pages have you looked at that the designer 
> used ECMAScript?

Everytime you write Javascript/JScript you're using ECMA script in one
form or another. Javascript is in fact essentially ECMA script, the DOM
and some web specific objects, unless I'm mistaken (which is quite
possible, not being a Javascript guru).

> 
> To allow people to create or structure their own languages by a 
> Scripting DTD, would give
> more power and flexibility to designers, weather they need a simple 
> If...Then, for their page,
> or a vigorous Do Loop Until. This would allow more 
> cross-browser-scripting, without the
> use of a language few people use. And if it were designed correctly, all 
> browsers with
> DTD or XMLNS capability could read and decipher it.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but it sure sounds like you're
describing a mutated form of XSLT.

> 
> If people refuse to change XHTML, create a new language that would 
> support the "Extensible HyperText Multipurpose Language".
> 

What you're proposing is something that is a practical impossibility.
There are enough problems trying to get browser vendors to support
current technologies (ie CSS2, XHTML *properly*) that are *years* old
without creating something like markup based scripting.

In my very strong opinion: markup is for marking up, scripts are for
scripting. They each do their jobs and that's all they should do (I
still have some issues with XSLT in fact).

- Andy

PS. Forgive me if I've come down a little hard, I just find this a
little bizarre and not very well thought out idea.

Received on Friday, 14 November 2003 18:00:54 UTC