[whatwg] Re: Doctype FPI

[Terje Bless]

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Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

>The more I think about this, the more I really think we should just have
>one DTD, "Generic HTML", that allows any tag name, so long as the
>content is well-formed. It would have to handle the optional elements,
>but other than that it would be equivalent to XML well-formedness
>checking.

Hmmm. Interesting notion.

Could you explain how you intend to formally define — in a machine-processable
manner — the syntax? Without the notion of Validity, how do you intend to
machine-check conformance? Since this corresponds to neither SGML nor XML, how
do you envision bringing the toolset into being? Since you seem to envision
not actually having any DTD to speak of, where do you see named entity
references fitting into the picture? What SGML Declaration do you intend be in
effect? Do you intend to make use of the SGMLDECL facility from WebSGML?


>Then, assuming we don't ever introduce elements with optional tags
>(which I highly doubt we will), we never need to update the DTD again.

«Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.» :-)

But assuming you don't… Will the SGML Declaration reflect this (by e.g.
removing the corresponding SHORTTAG features)? Will the conformance
requirements require document instances be fully-tagged? Amply-tagged?


>(Before people say "but then we wouldn't catch the syntax errors like
>putting a <foo> inside a <bar>!", let me remind you that DTDs are
>completely inadequate for the task of describing the actual syntax
>requirements of HTML, let alone Web Forms 2.0.)

So because the facility is not perfect you propose to do away with it
entirely?

I suggest a more constructive approach might be to provide the hooks in the
DTD, and in the specification, for a suitable Schema language; and to actually
publish a normative Schema for the resulting language.


- -- 
«I also need a longer attention sp- Ooh! Feet!» — Loz Pycock

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