[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTM

• To: <danny@d...>
• Subject: RE: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTML?
• From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>
• Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:01:34 -0700
• Cc: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>,"Bjoern Hoehrmann" <derhoermi@g...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Thread-index: AcRrE4jB75AI+xWATZqPmyKv7Z9p1AAObVbA
• Thread-topic: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTML?

> Hmm, I agree with you up to a point, but a newsfeed is 
> usually material intended for human consumption wrapped in a 
> machine-processable envelope

True, but even in this case, RSS has proven far superior to
screen-scraping XHTML.  Or are you planning to recant your support for
Atom? :-)

> for a start I suppose well-formed XML content is easier to 
> wrap up as a payload, and it's easier to embed metadata in 

Maybe; but not enough easier to justify the pain of forcing web
designers to deal with two different techniques.  Stuffing HTML 4.x in a
CDATA section is not rocket science, and people have been doing it for
many years without much trouble.  I have seen people get confused by
this, to be sure, but I have seen XHTML payloads blow up in numerous
ways too.  I would argue that embedding XHTML payloads is at least as
problematic, because XML has a habit of doing things with namespace
declarations that (while completely isomorphic in infoset terms) blows
up in web browsers.

And embedding metadata is not such a problem, IMO.  There are ways to do
it in HTML that work fine.

> Perhaps text-oriented content should then just be seen as an 
> opaque blob that requires a Postelian viewer, whether the 
> material came from a pure XML doc language, XSLT, +CSS or 
> originated in grandma's text editor. 

I totally agree.

> Metadata can be provided through the delivery mechanism (as in
> newsfeeds) or completely out-of-line (as in many RDF-based systems).

Again, I agree.  I think it's pretty easy to stick metadata inside an
HTML doc, of course, but I also think that this is the least interesting
or useful place to put metadata in the first place.

• Prev by Date: Re: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace insideHTML?
• Next by Date: RE: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTML?
• Previous by thread: RE: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTML?
• Next by thread: RE: What is the rule for parsing XML in a namespace inside HTML?
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread