[whatwg] several messages about XML syntax and HTML5

[James Graham]

Sam Ruby wrote:
> James Graham wrote:

>>
>>  [Internal data model in server]
>>                 |
>>                 |
>>        HTML 5 Serializer
>>                 |
>>                 |
>>             {Network}
>>                 |
>>                 |
>>           HTML 5 Parser
>>                 |
>>                 |
>>  [Whatever client tools you like]

> 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.

Sure. I personally support a way of providing extensibility so HTML documents 
can contain e.g. MathML content without dumping all the MathML elements in the 
HTML spec. However, as several people have noted, implementation experience at 
Opera suggests using the xmlns attribute for this purpose is not viable for 
backward compatibility reasons. To me that suggests using a HTML-only attribute 
like subtreeNS might be the way forward; clients that wanted to convert to XML 
could replace subtreeNS with xmlns.

-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead