RE: New issue: error recovery practices (Re: Proposed TAG Finding : Internet Media Type registration, consistency of use)

But also maddeningly predictable.  At the Vancouver conference, Paoli 
said with more conviction than credibility about SGML On the Web, 
"It MUST be easy!"  That was the meme of laissez-faire 
HTML and touted too often as the source of its success.  Now we 
are told we need the discipline SGML offered by those that worked 
so hard to relax it.

It won't work, guys.  You can sweat this as long as you like, 
but the kudzu is in the fields doing a job and it won't be 
removed by fiat.   Relaxed tag stacker web browsers are here to 
stay.  You'll have to attack this from another angle, one 
based on an advantage to the content creator, not one for 
the browser authors.   Any new XML application language is 
expected to abide by the XML specification.   HTML is neither 
SGML nor XML by rule and by design.   It can serve as an example 
of what happens given faulty design decisions with respect 
to the requirements of the programmers, but it was and is 
a content-creator oriented gencoding language, and as such, 
the programmers have to live with it.    XML clients can fit 
inside that framework, but won't replace it.

len


From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]

Chris Lilley wrote:

> TB>  For example, I
> TB> (perhaps in a minority) am OK with HTML processors being very liberal in 
> TB> what they accept; it helps let everyone publish to the web.
> 
> Hopefully you are in a minority there.
...
> So no, it does not "let everyone publish to the web". It just costs
> the development community zillions of dollars and hours of needless
> wasted work in attempting to get something with minimal display
> functionality on a handful of browser/OS combinations, screws everyone
> else, is minimally accessible or internationalized and can't ever
> change...

Stop holding back Chris, tell us what you *really* think :)

Let me rephrase that.  It was a good thing that in the period up to 1995 
or so, web browsers *were* liberal with HTML, because it did let 
everyone publish to the Web.

> Of course. I just don't buy into keeping that advantage on the server.
> Its just too useful to ignore. We need real XML clients, now.

That's the right answer.  It's maddening that in A.D. 2002 the popular 
browsers are still not very good at being XML clients.  -Tim

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2002 09:19:37 UTC