On May 15, 2005, at 9:43 PM, Robert Sayre wrote:
<evilExtension /> Legal? Which part of the spec rules it out?
No part. Per http://www.atompub.org/2005/04/18/draft-ietf-atompub-format -08.html#rfc.section.6.2 it's unknown foreign markup, with clear rules for how to handle it, right?
Yes, there are clear parsing rules. What's the benefit of allowing such markup?
The benefit the Web derived from HTML's implicit-but-universally-implemented MustIgnore rule; it introduced enough slack into the system that people could experiment without breaking things.
Related resource: http://www.webratio.com/images/20050408Bosworth.pps
More generally: ruling things out should be avoided unless (a) you're really sure they're harmful and (b) you think you can actually successfully enforce it. -Tim
