[whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Sam Ruby wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> > 
> > But not withstanding the SVG and MathML content, which isn't 
> > compatible with IE anyway (being ignored at best, and causing bad 
> > markup at worst), there are features that Sam can't use because of his 
> > constraints, which he could if he was using just HTML5. (Like 
> > document.write(), which is required for things like Google Analytics 
> > today, I believe.)
> 
> I don't see any documentation that requires XHTML to not support 
> display.write, but it certainly is a reality that nobody has done so.

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#document.write1

(I'd like to make it work, but can't work out how to specify it. If you 
have any ideas for actual concrete text for the spec, please let me know.)


> Luckily the DOM is malleable to the extent that I could fill in that gap 
> if I want to.  In fact, you can find the logic to get Adsense working in 
> XHTML by following the links from here:
> 
>   http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/11/10/Thats-Not-Write

That [1] doesn't actually do a real document.write(). It's more like 
insertAdjacentHTML(). It also doesn't handle scoping for namespace prefix 
declarations and doesn't handle nested document.write()s.

[1] or more to the point, the code at the bottom of:
   http://planet.intertwingly.net/personalize.js


> But the fact is that I rather like the fact that my website costs are 
> funded by IE users.  Most of my friends never see an ad served from my 
> site.

Again, while I have a great respect for you and your work, you are hardly 
representative of the majority of Web authors, which is who I have to 
primarily take into account when it comes to the spec.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'