James Graham wrote:
Even in cases where the content really is well formed XML the client is entirely the wrong place to enforce validity -- it means that a tiny mistake causes suffering for the person least able to deal with the problem -- the end user. Needless to say this is terrible UI and thus widespread implementation of fatal error handling is, at best, a metastable situation -- as soon as one UA decides they can gain some advantage by including error handling, everyone else has to follow suit. This has happened with many "XML" based feed formats, for example.
That's an interesting argument, and it seems logically sound. However, something's wrong with it, though I can't quite place my finger on where exactly the mistake lies.
The reason I know that something's wrong with it is that the conclusion is not seen in the wild today. Feed readers are in fact swinging away from permissive error handling, and are increasingly choosing to simply reject malformed feeds, and not bother trying to handle it. Consequently far more feeds today are well-formed than was the case a few years ago.
This may be the result of increasing use of better software to generate feeds than the homegrown hacks we used a few years ago. WordPress, Blogger, and such account for a much larger percentage of the installed base than they used to.
There is of course a snowball effect. As more feed readers reject ill-formed feeds, blogs have greater incentives to produce well-formed feeds.
The same effect may be possible in the web browser space as well. However I think it would have to start with better authoring tools and template systems.
-- Elliotte Rusty Harold [EMAIL PROTECTED] Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
