[whatwg] External document subset support

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 18 May 2009, Brett Zamir wrote:
>
> Section 10.1, "Writing XHTML documents" observes: "According to the XML 
> specification, XML processors are not guaranteed to process the external 
> DTD subset referenced in the DOCTYPE."
> 
> While this is true, since no doubt the majority of web browsers are 
> already able to process external stylesheets or scripts, might the very 
> useful feature of external entity files, be employed by XHTML 5 as a 
> stricter subset of XML (similar to how XML Namespaces re-annexed the 
> colon character) in order to allow this useful feature to work for XHTML 
> (to have access to HTML entities or other useful entities for one, as 
> well as enable a poor man's localization, etc.)?

While there are arguments on both sides of whether this is a good idea or 
not, I think the more important concern in this case is whether we can 
extend XML in this way. I think in practice we should leave this up to the 
XML specs and their successors. I don't think it would be appropriate for 
us to profile the XML spec in this way.

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