[whatwg] Re: ISO 639 / ISO 3166 / ISO 4217 inputs

[Henri Sivonen]

On Aug 26, 2004, at 17:20, Ave Wrigley wrote:

> Is it feasible to have the UEs update their lists dynamically? The ISO
> lists are hosted in a (fairly) reliable place. After all, this sort of
> thing is done for referencing standard DTDs in non-standalone XML 
> pages.

Real-world Web browsers do not fetch the DTD from the network. They 
either do not parse the DTD at all or use a *heavily* abridged local 
DTD (ie. fake it). The local bogo-DTD is basically a list of entity 
declarations.

The DTD stuff on the Web is mostly an illusion. I consider the way W3C 
specs keep up the illusion harmful. ("Strictly conforming" and all that 
stuff.)

As for country lists, I think the Way That Works(tm) is that the 
country list comes from the server hosting the Web app. If you want to 
have that easily, I think asking the Struts or Barracuda developers to 
add it would be a better idea that including the data in the UA. Having 
the data come from the Web app works with old browsers, too.

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