Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>]

>This is getting pretty ridiculous.  IE is not an XML parser, period.

IE is an application that uses an XML parser.

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

It says that after a fatal error the processor (=parser) must not
continue to pass data to the application in the normal way.  The
point of this is to ensure that applications - of which browsers
are a canonical example - do not accept not-well-formed documents
without at least making this clear to the user.

If you look through the old XML SIG archives you will find at least
one statement from Microsoft confirming (explicitly in the context of
browsers) that they intend to conform to this.

>and CERTAINLY does not make this strange distinction between
>read-only and edit-capable that you seem to be implying.

The distinction is not within the XML spec.  It is between
applications which use conforming XML processors and those which
don't.  It has always been obvious that editors (other than strict
structure editors) unlike browsers would not be able to be use
conforming XML processors.

-- Richard