RE: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

["Christopher R. Maden" <crism@maden.org>]

At 02:50 9-09-2001, Joshua Allen wrote:
>This is getting pretty ridiculous.  IE is not an XML parser, period.

No, you're right.  MSXML is an XML parser (or claims to be).

That MSXML has a mode that allows it to parse things that are not XML is 
questionable.

That MSIE delegates the handling of XML entities to MSXML in that mode is 
unacceptable.

>The XML spec has nothing to say about what the correct behavior of a
>browser is,

No - but the parser is *required* not to "continue normal processing (i.e., 
it must not continue to pass character data and information about the 
document's logical structure to the application in the normal 
way)."  Microsoft *wanted* this language to avoid the bugward-compatibility 
wars of 1996-1998.  One of the editors of the spec is from Microsoft.  Now 
that they're in the dominant browser position, we see what that was worth.

I am not usually a big Microsoft fan.  But I have openly lauded their 
efforts at standards compliance since Jean joined the SGML ERB.  Oh, my 
friends mocked me - they said it wouldn't last.  "Embrace and extend - 
it'll all end in tears, you'll see."  But I was young and foolish, those 
dozens of Internet years ago.  Now I see their wisdom, alas, too late.

>That is like
>saying that the UNIX 'cat' command is broke because it does not fatally
>error when encountering a paragraph marker in a text stream that has an
>XML declaration at the beginning, because 'cat' "does not provide any
>mechanism for correction."

Neither Notepad nor cat claims to be a conforming XML application, nor to 
include same.  MSXML does, as does MSIE.  There are substantial bugs that 
can impair the long-term health of the content on the Internet.  At the 
least, Microsoft needs to acknowledge that they are bugs, rather than 
arguing that the specification is broken; that's just Humpty Dumpty talk.

And if your assertions about Radio Userland and Manila are accurate, then 
they have significant bugs, too.  All the glass houses need to be boarded 
up, I don't care who's throwing the stones.

-Chris
-- 
Christopher R. Maden, Principal Consultant, HMM Consulting Int'l, Inc.
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://www.hmmci.com/ > <URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
PGP Fingerprint: BBA6 4085 DED0 E176 D6D4  5DFC AC52 F825 AFEC 58DA