Re: HTML and XML

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> On 16 Feb 2009, at 14:34, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
>> Bijan Parsia wrote:
>>> On 16 Feb 2009, at 12:06, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>> ...
>>> DTDs with errors in major coursework in the presence of oXygen and 
>>> pretty extensive training is within the past few weeks.
>>> ...
>>
>> Were the students told how to test their submissions?
> 
> Have you ever used oXygen? The testing is built into the editing.

No, I haven't. So they didn't use it, apparently?

> I notice you didn't say whether you found it easier to believe that my 
> graduate students earlier had trouble producing well formed XML.

I have no opinion on that specifically.

When I write DTDs, I always test them (by using them for validation, or 
transforming with Trang).

When I write XML, I always test it by running it through an XML parser.

> Thanks for giving additional evidence in support of my point. You did 
> not give, in your reply, a reliable procedure for testing XML well 
> formedness for many people. I'll not that your instructions involve 

The procedure is to run the XML through an XML parser. How to invoke 
that parser is platform-specific.

I only mentioned IE because that's something available to something like 
90% of the users, out of the box.

> using a browser in a way that many (most) users of browsers would not 
> expect to use it or a rather obscure tool. Furthermore, your 
> instructions are incomplete, as I'm pretty sure that a .txt suffix on 
> the file name for this content:
> """<test>
>    <foo>dfdf<b>fd</foo></b>
> </test ref="dfsdf>"""
> 
> will load it without giving any errors. (Checked, so it did.) And if I 
> serve it with the right mime type, even the .xml won't help.

Yes. So? Works as designed. Teach people how to do it right.

> I reiterate that it is, prima facie, non-trivial in many computing 
> environments to produce well formed XML.

It may not be trivial to produce it, but it *is* trivial to test it.

> ...
>> Users authoring docbook or XSLTs do not seem have trouble with it.
> 
> Those are pretty expert audience, esp. the XSLT.
> ...

I'd expect there to be more XSLT users than DocBook users. Anyway.

> ...
> In fact, the problems tended to occur in elements I didn't *care* about. 
> So, in order to extract some data, I have to fix all the well-formedness 
> errors *then* use my XQuery?
> ...

Actually, the producer is supposed to fix the bug, not the consumer :-)

> ...

BR, Julian

Received on Monday, 16 February 2009 15:58:42 UTC