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Well-formed=Bad-karma? (was Re: Postel's law, exceptions)

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Well-formed=Bad-karma? (was Re: Postel's law, exceptions)
• From: Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>
• Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:26:03 +1100
• In-reply-to: <p06010205bc2a7825b4be@[192.168.254.4]>
• References: <r02000200-1028-D1176A3A460611D8AD220003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]> <p06010205bc2a7825b4be@[192.168.254.4]>
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Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> One thing I noticed in several of the articles I read on this issue 
> from authors on both sides of the fence was a disturbing tendency to 
> confuse well-formedness with validity. I am firm in my belief that 
> well-formedness is a minimum criterion we should not compromise on. 

Vox pouli, vox dei.  Why isn't it evidence that current WF goes too far,
and that XML needs to be refactored to cope accordingly? 

People interested in this may care to see "Editor's Concrete Syntax" [1]
for a reworking of well-formedness to retain XML's parseability but be
more terse/forgiving. I think HTML would be much better reformulated
in terms of ECS rather than XML, even if just as the on-ramp
for XHTML.  The i18n is the same,
the parseability without needing to read a DTD is the same. ECS is pretty
much what most colouring editors implement for XML or HTML, so I
believe it reflects a common (and, what it more, good) grassroots practise
already in widespread use.  ECS could also be seen as an error-recovery
strategy for some future non-Draconian XML, if the concept of WF
is sacrosanct and inviolable.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

[1] http://www.topologi.com/resources/pdfs/ECS.pdf

• References:
  • Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: Postel's law, exceptions
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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