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Re: Postel's "Law": A question for liberal parsers

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Postel's "Law": A question for liberal parsers
• From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@i...>
• Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:54:12 -0500
• Organization: http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/foaf.xrdf
• References: <004201c3db9f$88dd3fb0$650aa8c0@BOBDEV> <6.0.0.22.2.20040116165615.02691fc8@p...>

> >     If we pass on the bad stuff, we'll be accused by our clients of
> >creating badly formed RSS files. On the other hand, if we "clean up"
> >the stuff we find, we may find that the owners of the source feeds
> >object to our modifying what they published. Some may thank us for
> >fixing obvious problems, however, I'm nervous that one day one of our
> >"cleanup" routines will cause a semantic, not just syntactical, change
> >in the content... What should we do?

Experience, with RSS feeds, has shown an overwhelming willingness on the part of
the content producers to FIX THEIR ERRORS.

Ask them, do it using a third party if you don't want to do it yourself.

But above all, DO SOMETHING to help eliminate the problem.

> And who might be held liable Bob if its a real nasty error?
>    I guess this is how the html mess started.
> Lets just....
>    then we can just ....

The number of anecdotal stories about the hypothetical resistance to fixes seems
to far outnumber reality, at least as far as the content in question is
concerned.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com

• References:
  • Postel's "Law": A question for liberal parsers
    • From: "Bob Wyman" <bob@w...>
  • Re: Postel's "Law": A question for liberal parsers
    • From: Dave Pawson <dpawson@n...>

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