RE: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 10:32 PM 9/8/2001 -0700, Joshua Allen wrote:
>The fact is, I do not believe that the
>spec requires the web browser to bomb on people who want to view such
>files, and I know for certain that users don't want that.

Isn't that precisely what browser vendors requested of the XML WG?  (Both 
NS and Microsoft.)  We've been told that story here often enough that I 
believe it's likely true.

"People who want to view such files" may have no clue what's going on, but 
I suspect they'll be calling up someone who does know and getting the 
documents fixed.  People do send nasty messages to webmasters and other 
information providers, and that feedback loop is a lot of why the Web works 
as well as it does.

>   Maybe the
>browser should pop up a warning or something, but let's not act like
>this is a black-and-white issue.

Supporting the creation of a class of supposedly XML documents that work 
fine in IE but no where else at all seems like a reasonably black-and-white 
issue.

Perhaps I'm a little more tolerant of "relaxed" parsers that come with 
clearly-written warning labels, but I see no such warnings on Internet 
Explorer, nor do I think them likely.