xml-dev - Re: XHTML DTDs failing in IE5

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

Andrew Layman wrote:
> 
>	 In this list and in others, there have been strong and conflicting
> opinions expressed on what would be the best behavior of a parser, and no
> settled standard exists.

I can't buy this.  The W3C specifications for XML and for namespaces are
quite settled ... and _neither_ one places a requirement that declared
"xmlns*" attributes must have "#FIXED" default values.

In fact, the statements that exist make it clear that from the XML 1.0
syntax point of view, "xmlns*" are like other attributes ... which may
be defaulted or not, and hence may omit (or include) "#FIXED" depending
on what a given DTD author chooses to do.


>	 	I do not, in fact, know that the IE5
> rules are the ultimately best rules; what we can say in their favor is that
> because they are conservative, they do not encourage the creation of
> documents that are accepted by MSXML and yet are later rejected by
> conformant parsers after standards have been worked out.

Sound like you're saying it's conservative to treat MSXML as the holder
of the standards, rather than the W3C documents.  That's not a very
popular attitude outside of Redmond!

In a standards context, "conservative" means implementing only (and
exactly!) what the specifications say.  I don't think this is what
Microsoft has done in this case.   Speculating on the reasons why may
be amusing, but I'd rather see this bug fixed (soon!) instead.

- Dave

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