Re: XML5: Re: [xml-dev] MicroXML

[Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>]

On Dec 13, 2010, at 17:29, rjelliffe wrote:

> Is Henri suggesting (and I don't want to say it is a bad idea...) that really there already is a subset of XML implemented and in the field:  that subset of XML that HTML5 parsers will support? I think Henri wrote "XML5" at one stage as a typo, but it fits.

XML5 wasn't a typo. I meant something pretty much like what's described in http://xml5.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/specification/Overview.src.html

It's not about a "subset of XML that HTML5 parsers will support". It's about defining a parser that parses NS-well-formed XML 1.0 to the same infoset as an external entity non-resolving XML 1.0 processor but that parses any stream into *some* infoset without ever throwing a fatal error (and doing this mostly by copying and pasting the HTML5 tokenizer state machine).

> If that is the case, then all that is needed is to ask the HTML5 WG to give it a brand name, and leave it up them (Hixie, big business, etc) to figure out the details.

Nope. ;-)

> If it is already in the ballpark, and if it at least has some concrete rationale (which we are far from here) then maybe it is close enough?

XML5 would be get rid of the YSoD. Getting rid of the YSoD would make XML more suitable for using on the Web, thought it's not clear if it's that worthwhile to make XML more suitable for the Web now that SVG and MathML work in text/html.

To the extent there are people who like Namespaces but who consider Draconian behavior a disadvantage for XML, making XML processing non-Draconian would give them Namespaces together non-Draconian behavior without putting xmlns into HTML. That is, I think Namespaces are bad and Draconian error handling is bad, so to make a combination that has Namespaces but not Draconian error handling, I think it makes more sense to remove one bad thing (Draconian error handling) from XML than to add a bad thing (xmlns syntax) to HTML.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/