[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Blueberry is not "closed" (was: Closing Blueberry)
Asked off list: > . . . just *declaring* Blueberry -- and not > using any new feature, that older tools won't be able to handle it? We would hope so. A parser designed for XML 1.0 will do one of several things: The preferred response is that it should stop at the XML declaration and say, "I don't know how to handle this." Or equivalent error message. The reason this is preferred is that otherwise we increase the risk of passing bad data around. Although this is the correct response, it does have the potential to cause the undesirable interaction in the market that has been mentioned elsewhere. I think the issue is not if, but when, and can it be postponed long enough to let smaller players keep competing. A less desirable response would be to ignore the declaration and proceed. If there were in fact no real blueberriness, there would be no problems on that doc. But these parsers have no defense from real blueberriness -- just choke suddenly on an extension character or a NEL where whitespace should be, and reject documents with complaints about syntax that may not be recognized by the person who has to figure out why the document supposedly validated somewhere else chokes his machinery. The least desirable response would be that the parser would only reject text known to be necessarily illegal in the combination of XML 1.0/UNICODE 2.0. Why least desirable? Data integrity and adherence to <strike>spec</strike>recommendation. Even if we now loosen the recommendation up, there is no way the older parsers could have known what the changed recommendation written four years later would specify. This kind of parser might not complain where you would want it to, and it might complain in a meaningless place. Guesswork in, guesswork out. Joel http://homepage.mac.com/reiisi
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