[whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[Elliotte Harold]

Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, Elliotte Harold wrote:
>> Secondly, anyone who actually tried to use an SGML parser to handle HTML 
>> rapidly hit a wall since most HTML documents were not even close to 
>> actually conformant to the SGML spec or the HTML DTD.
> 
> Exactly. And the *exact same situation* exists today with XML.
> 
> Anyone who actually ties to use an XML parser to handle HTML rapidly hits 
> a wall, since most HTML documents are not even close to actually 
> conformant to the HTML or XML specs. Even if we were to require that HTML5 
> documents use exactly XML syntax, this would still be the case.
> 


Well, no. I do use XML parsers to process HTML documents on a regular 
basis. I don't do it for all documents, but I profitably do it for quite 
a few. As long as it's possible to make the documents well-formed, it's 
possible to parse them with an XML parser because they are XML.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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