Re: [xml-dev] [ANNOUNCE] New MicroXML draft available

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Liam R E Quin scripsit:

> As I understand it html5 is deprecating processing instructions.

True.  But if you want to deliver arbitrary MicroXML to the browser and
have it formatted, you need to be able to include xml-style PIs.

> I'm also not keen on allowing error recovery without specifying how it
> works - HTML taught us that this does not lead to interoperability.

To be exact, MicroXML permits parsers to go on parsing even after they
have reported an error.  The MicroLark push and pull parsers do so, but
the tree-builder parser gives up if there's an error.

> The approach taken by HTML 5 is probably a good one if you've decided
> to break backwards compatibility and have things labeled XML that no
> existing (conformant) XML processor can handle.

MicroXML has a firm distinction between documents and non-documents,
corresponding to the distinction between well-formed documents and
not-well-formed documents in XML.  It simply abstains from telling
parsers what to do when they are handed non-documents.  A parser could,
for example, decide that its input is full XML, or HTML, or GIF for that
matter, and pass it off to a different parser.

-- 
Man has no body distinct from his soul,              John Cowan
for that called body is a portion of the soul        cowan@ccil.org
discerned by the five senses,                        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
the chief inlets of the soul in this age.  --William Blake