RE: [xml-dev] Postel's law, exceptions

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

The issue isn't whether they are bugs in the generator. The question is
whether an aggregator should [for example] try each of the heuristics
below to try to parse an XML document instead of giving Joe User an ugly
error message because the Ziff Davis Microsoft-Watch or National
Geographic RSS feed doesn't specify the correct encoding in the XML
declaration. 

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>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rich Salz [mailto:rsalz@datapower.com] 
>Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 1:09 PM
>To: Dare Obasanjo
>Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Postel's law, exceptions
>
>> Exactly how does this solve the most common errors in RSS (and most 
>> likely ATOM) feeds?
>
>I love concrete data.  As the original/main author of the 
>popular RSSBandit, I assume you're right about these being the 
>main problems.
>Let me push back at each one in turn.
>
>> 1.) Unescaped ampersands in link elements
>
>Where do these happen?  Is it the links that the RSS/Atom 
>generator creates?  If so, then those are just bugs, man.  I 
>don't have anything new to say.
>
>> 2.) documents with incorrect endoding in the XML declaration
>
>This is bogus content generated by the generator again, right?
>
>> 3.) Use of HTML entities in the document such as in the <title>
>
>This is in the content that RSS/ATom is syndicating?  If so, 
>then carrying it as base64 doesn't break the XML purity of 
>Atom and it leaves the "you interpret the content" issue up to 
>the client (client's browser).  Best of both possible worlds, no?
>
>Sorry for not getting it all.  Could you post an example or two?
>	/r$
>
>--
>Rich Salz, Chief Security Architect
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>
>
>