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RE: Postel's Law Has No Exceptions

• To: 'Tim Bray' <tbray@t...>, "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>
• Subject: RE: Postel's Law Has No Exceptions
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 09:20:44 -0500
• Cc: "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>

The article at 

http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/08/19/Draconianism

is a very good defense of the well-formedness rules.

I fought this one, but on the whole, the separation of 
the rules for the syntax and the validation rules of the 
application language, and the consequent ability to 
then specify the Draconian parse provided reliability 
where it could be obtained and flexibility where it 
was allowable.  I think it is a smart design and don't 
mind being wrong about that.  

From a system level design viewpoint, Postel's observations 
don't apply here.

len


From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@t...]

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

>>The creators of XML were wrong. Postel's Law has no exceptions."
> 
> Just to be clear, this is Aaron Swartz's argument, not mine.   I
> disagree with Aaron, but for reasons that are not yet coherent enough to
> post.  I figured his provocation was worth some thought, however.

See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-sgml-wg/1997Apr/ and 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-sgml-wg/1997May/ - but only if 
you've got some time to invest.

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