[whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[Sam Ruby]

James Graham wrote:
> Elliotte Harold wrote:
> 
>> That means I have to send text/html to browsers (because that's the 
>> only thing they understand) and let my clients ignore that hint.
> 
> No.
> 
> As I understand it, the full chain of events should look like this:
> 
>  [Internal data model in server]
>                 |
>                 |
>        HTML 5 Serializer
>                 |
>                 |
>             {Network}
>                 |
>                 |
>           HTML 5 Parser
>                 |
>                 |
>  [Whatever client tools you like]
> 
> The only technical issue is that your HTML5 parser has to produce a data 
> format that your other client tools like. If this involves the 
> construction of an XML-like tree that's fine. But you should _never_ try 
> to use an XML parser to produce the tree because it _will_ break with 
> conforming HTML5 documents.

Excellent ASCII art.

This only works if the internal-data-model to HTML5 conversion is 
lossless.  If it is not, people will find ways with structured comments 
or by creating intentionally invalid HTML5 and relying on the error 
recovery that is either prescribed or observed to be commonly practiced.

- Sam Ruby