- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 02:01:14 +0000 (GMT)
- To: Etan Wexler <ewexler@stickdog.com>
- Cc: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>, "L. David Baron" <dbaron@fas.harvard.edu>
On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Etan Wexler wrote:
>> [Any] stream of characters should [...] be parseable.
>
> Why do you so advocate?
Because there are two alternatives (as far as I can see):
1. UAs develop proprietary error recovery, and we end up with CSS being
the same mess as HTML, despite Hakon and Bert's efforts in making a
forward compatible grammar.
2. We say that unparsable CSS must be totally ignored, which results in
(a) authors finding their CSS can go from totally working to
totally not working when they add one character (much like XML,
but with no immediate feedback since CSS is in support files)
(b) incremental parsers having to throw out everything they've
parsed so far when finding unparsable material
Neither of these are welcome, given that new syntax is being added to CSS
all the time with the expectation that it can be mixed with older CSS and
having it work predictably in all CSS UAs.
--
Ian Hickson )\._.,--....,'``. fL
"meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Saturday, 4 January 2003 21:01:15 UTC